KRAUTROCK, JA!

On my recent visit to L.A. I went to check out the Obey x Teebs event at Space 15 Twenty.
I really enjoyed Teebs’ 400 hand painted record covers. I actually have a special love for record covers in general and sometimes happen to buy random records I’ve never heard of just for their covers. They are a perfect 31,5 x 31,5 cm piece of Art. If you hate the music you can always just nail it to your wall…
Anyway, I’m not yet sure what the link is or how it got there but on the merchandise table I found this CD:

‘KRAUTROCK CLASSICS, a tribute to German cosmic music’.

Being a ‘kraut’ myself and coming from kraut parents that actually performed in krautrock bands themselves, I obviously had to have it.
Please find out more about it here.

And while listening to this modern tribute to the original stuff, I decided to dedicate a little blog post to this wunderbar kind of music made in Germany.

‘Krautrock’ is the (slightly offensive) term for an experimental German music movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Bands with amazing names like Popol Vuh, Amon Düül, and also the infamous ‘Kraftwerk’ emerged out of a depressed post war Germany. This generation born after WWII wanted to distance themselves from the country’s horrible past. They were trying to establish a new and unique identity, beyond common western rock and roll. Basically they invented their own music. Very spaced out, acid drenched, apocalyptic music. Super weird, and pretty awesome. It got especially awesome after they began to introduce more and more electronic devices to their compositions and thereby paved the way to the electronic music we know today.
So, even if you feel like its all just crazy noise, you will have to give them credit for that.
I highly recommend educating yourself more about this movement by watching this super dope documentary:

 

 

And now, lets get happy and enjoy the wonderful aesthetics and names of some Krautrock record covers, shall we?