Krautrock is a term that surfaced in the late 1960s British music press in reference to a new style of German rock that encompassed the scope of American and British Psychedelic music from noise experimentation to electronica. Originally derisive, the term is derived from from the slur "kraut" which, comes from "sauerkraut" (a delicious pickled cabbage dish native to Germany).

The movement first surfaced in the late 60s and reached the peak of its popularity in the mid 70s. By the later half of the decade, Krautrock was eclipsed by Punk rock, New Wave and Industrial. German Techno pioneers Kraftwerk, although more central to the Electronic and Techno movements, are often cited as the last and most famous Krautrock band.

Despite the ignoble moniker, Krautrock bands have been vastly influential in both rock and electronic spheres of music. In fact, the term is something of a compliment. Krautrock bands are the pioneers of modern Electro-rock, Art rock and Post Punk because of their incorporation of electronic elements into standard rock songwriting.

The Social Climate:
Hindsight being 20/20, 40 years later critics have confirmed that the explosion of Krautrock affected the social and political climate of post-war Germany. Initially, Krautrock bands were overtly political in character, building on mantras of the American "hippie" movement. They argued, (sometimes violently) for a more anarchist vision of society and artistic expression. Musicians in Germany overwhelmingly responded to the cultural void resulting from World War II by looking to American and British rock of the time period. In the late 60s, ethereal and atmospheric bands involved in the Psychedelic movement expanded on the standard popular rock songwriting format pioneered by the Beatles. Although they maintained the lead guitar-bass guitar-lead vocals-drums structure of a rock band, as well as the general rock song writing sensibility, Psychedelic bands in American and the U.K. stretched the formal limits of tone and sound and the lyrical subject matter of their songs.

They also did loads of acid.

Psychedelic music, for Krautrock bands, provided an atmospheric and conceptual framework from which to craft (or kraft, rather) rock songs. Psychedelic music also imparted to Krautrock the aesthetic direction of the song writing and creative sensibility. Psychedelic music itself was about "expanding your mind," "breaking through," "pushing the boundaries of consciousness." Krautrock bands took this credo to the limits by introducing electronic elements and other experimental instrumentation totally off the radar for the time period.

They also liked acid. A lot. And mollotron apparently.

The Music:
Musically, Krautrock is about expanding psychedelia to its utmost limits by incorporating random sounds re-envisioned as mantra rhythms and robotic electronic music. Electronica, at the time, was an extremely avant-garde phenomenon; the media that created the sounds and tones were not even considered "instruments" as such (and perhaps still aren't today).

The seminal bands of the genre formed from 1968 to 1972: CAN, Guru Guru, Tangerine Dream, Faust, Ash Rah Temple and Neu! Although all these bands are grouped under the Krautrock label, none of them really sound like each other; each pushed psychedelic and progressive rock in unique directions. CAN added free-form jazz and jams into their songs, Guru Guru played cosmic, bluesy jam music, Tangerine Dream used electronic synths, and a more studio-orientated experimentalism. Neu! produced minimalist melodies and disorientating, rhythm-driven music.

Generally, the genre progressed toward an increasingly electronic sound, stripping traditional rock instrumentation down to a monotonous electronic rhythm. Tangerine Dream's Phaedra in 1974 marked a divergence of that group from Krautrock to a more sequencer-driven sound that was later seen as the first release of the "Berlin School."

In the same year, Kraftwerk released the album Autobahn, and inaugurated the new sound of German techno.

The Image:
Although the music was mainly instrumental, the imagery associated with the movement filters American psychedelia thorough a post-war German obsession with space travel, robotics, industrialism and modernity. The mixture of radical politics, drug spiritualism and mid-20th century futurism spawned an obscure and esoteric spectrum of creative output –– baffling considering the contemporary aesthetics of minimalism and self-reflexivity.

Picture the characters from the Lord of the Rings as robots fighting aliens on Mars with dandelion-shooting ray guns. Now drop six hits of acid and pretend you grew up in Stuttgart.

Even a cursory glance at the titles on Space Box: 1970 & Beyond, one of the better Krautrock compilations, elucidates a Germanic drug-induced outlandishness that makes Frank Zappa look like Phil Collins.

To wit:
Brainticket - Architectural Metaphor, Burning Sky - Porcupine Tree, Seconds Of Forever - Nik Turner, International Sponge - Alien Planetscapes, UFO - Guru Guru, In Aquarian Dream - Melting Euphoria, Deranged (Zero Gravity Mix) – Kraftwelt, Past Zero Time - Dark Matter, Contrapuntal Interstellar Radars - Conrad Schnitzler, Vortex In My Cortex - The Brain.

In each of the aforementioned groupings, the song title was first and the band name was second. Just FYI.

Krautrock in the PRC:
The term "krautrock" has come in vogue as contemporary western rock bands look to electronic music to take traditional rock in new directions. However, the specificity of the music to Germany and to the post WW II socioeconomic climate ensures that the influence of this part genre almost purely aesthetic. Increasingly, rock bands today look to electronic music to take their sound in unexpected directions. Krautrock bands had this same motivation. The electronic pallet is somewhat different today, as are the drugs.

Does anyone over the age of 15 even touch acid anymore?

The aesthetic influence of Krautrock in terms of song kraftsmanship and instrumentation is just about as far as you can go in detecting it in contemporary music. For many bands in China, specifically Beijing, the image and idea of Punk rock -- intrinsically opposite to Krautrock -- (it was the British press, which coined the debasing term and made a household name of "punk") is the ideal young musicians still strive for.

As western rock bands rediscover the avant-garde experimentalism of krautrock and begin to shed the constraints of the Punk rock they inherited from their older brothers and sisters, (among the popular western bands that cite Krautrock bands as influences are Radiohead, The Secret Machines, Liars, Tortoise, and even Wilco) it is ironic that Chinese bands could be thought of as primed to mount a glorious, bombastic Krautrock revival. Simply put, Prog rock, with an emphasis on experimentation through excessive instrumentation has a larger audience in China.

The popularity of the Shanghai-based band Cold Fairyland, a band with many Krautrock undertones, seems to imply that if a band does some ten minute free-form Prog rock, Jazz improv thing with kooky-ass instruments, Chinese audiences are up for the ride. Western audiences, it can be concluded, would balk.

Three Essential Albums:

CAN – Tago Mago (1971)

Tangerine Dream – Electronic Meditation (1970)

Neu! – Neu! (1972)