Kraftwerk in their studio, 1973 – Ralf Hütter, Florian Schneider, Emil Schult
April 27, 2025
I recently went to a concert by the guitarist Michael Rother, someone I never expected to see in Seattle. In case you're unfamiliar with him, Rother is a somewhat legendary figure. (You can read good interviews with him here and here.) Now 74 years old, he’s an icon of what has been historically called "krautrock," an unfortunate term used to refer to a wide range of artists who didn't necessarily have much in common beyond their country of origin. (For a thorough history, I suggest you read Future Days by David Stubbs.) While this music was not much appreciated in Germany at the time or widely known elsewhere, it nevertheless influenced many non-German artists, including Brian Eno and David Bowie, Public Image Ltd., Radiohead, tons of indie rock bands, and early hip-hop artists like Afrika Bambaataa.
I accumulated a fair amount of this stuff In the late 70s and early 80s, gleaned from used record shops and bargain bins, but a lot of it got weeded out as time went by and my musical interests shifted. In the last few years I've revisited some of it on CDs, and seeing Michael Rother got me interested in going back down that rabbit hole. So here are some personal favorites that I still enjoy. Since Rother is the inspiration for this adventure, I'll start with him and expand out from there.
Rother played in an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, though he doesn’t appear on any of their recordings. Drummer Klaus Dinger was also in the group then, and together they co-founded the band Neu! in 1971. Rother and Dinger had quite contrasting personalities and musical tendencies, but their differences resulted in a powerful chemistry. Their first album (1972) introduces the minimal, repetitive sound that became their hallmark. It’s an excellent and important record, but I equally enjoy their third and final album, Neu! '75 (1975). (Confession: their second album does nothing for me.) Like the Velvet Underground, Neu! sold few records at the time but went on to be hugely influential in the decades that followed. Dinger later used elements of the Neu! sound as the basis of his next band, La Düsseldorf, which I find less satisfying, though there are plenty of people who would disagree with me.
In addition to Neu!, Rother was also in the group Harmonia with Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius (both of whom comprised the group known originally as Kluster, and later as Cluster). Harmonia produced two albums in their day, with two posthumous releases (one with Eno) appearing much later. To my ears, their first album (1974) is more electronic and experimental like Cluster, and the second album (1975) has more of a guitar-oriented rock feel similar to Neu!. Both are good, but I prefer the first one.
After Harmonia, Michael Rother began releasing solo albums, usually in collaboration with the terrific drummer Jaki Liebezeit from the band Can. I'm really only familiar with the first three albums: Flammende Herzen (1977), Sterntaler (1978), and Katzenmusik (1979). All of them are surprisingly melodic and quite charming, and equally enjoyable if somewhat similar. I stopped paying attention after that, so I'm not too familiar with his later work, but all of it can be heard on BandCamp.
Like many people, I found my way to Cluster via their collaborations with Brian Eno. While their earlier work tends to be rather noisy and freeform, after they moved to an old farmhouse in the countryside their music became more structurally coherent and pastoral in mood, while still retaining enough quirky rough edges to keep it interesting. My hands-down favorite is Sowiesoso (1976), followed closely by Grosses Wasser (1979). The two albums with Eno – Cluster & Eno (1977) and After the Heat (1978) – are both excellent as well. Cluster then went dormant for a while, reemerging in 1990 with Apropos Cluster, which is worth hearing, though for me some of the magic of their late 70s period is missing.
Cluster co-founder Roedelius went on to have a prolific solo career. Some of his albums bear a passing resemblance to Cluster, but most veer off in a more lyrical direction, often bordering on New Age. Now 90 years old, Roedelius toured the US as recently as 2017, when he played at the Chapel here in Seattle. I'm not so familiar with his vast discography beyond the first six albums, but my favorites are Durch Die Wüste (1978), Jardin Au Fou (1979), and esecially Wenn der Südwind weht (1981).
Can was one of the few German bands from this era to have several of their albums issued in the US back in the day (their first three albums were not released here until 1990). Those albums all quickly found their way to the cut-out bins, where they were discovered by curious young crate diggers like myself who were willing to risk a dollar on something unknown yet intriguing. Those three US releases – Ege Bamyasi (1972), Future Days (1973), Soon Over Babaluma (1974) – are my favorites, with Ege Bamyasi being the one I play the most. At their best, Can mixed elements of Stockhausen-inspired electronic weirdness, fusion-era Miles funky grooves, and psychedelic jams into something really interesting.
Popol Vuh was the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist and composer Florian Fricke. Their first two albums were almost entirely electronic "space music." In fact, their first album (1970) was allegedly the first recording released of all original music using a Moog synthesizer. Their beautiful third album, Hosianna Mantra (1972), was the start of their classic era, and saw Fricke ditching the Moog and returning to conventional instruments, joined by several other musicians and Korean singer Djong Yun. Listeners outside of Germany became aware of Popol Vuh through their majestic soundtrack work for films by Werner Herzog, especially Aguirre, Wrath of God (1975) and Heart of Glass (1977). I stopped following them after Nosferatu (1978), though quite a few more albums followed until Fricke died in 2001.
Doing research for this post, the name Eberhard Schoener has popped up occasionally. I remember seeing his records in the import bins back in the day, but don't recall ever hearing any of them. So I decided to explore his vast catalog, hoping to discover something new to me. I had assumed he made sequencer-driven space music similar to Tangerine Dream, et al. He has, but in fact he's been all over the place, musically. Starting as a classical violinist and conductor, he was the first European owner of a Moog modular synth (which he later sold to Florian Fricke of Popol Vuh). He went on to make electronic deconstructions of Baroque music, collaborated with various rock musicians (Jon Lord of Deep Purple, the Police, singer Hazel O'Connor and King Crimson sax man Mel Collins), dabbled in jazz fusion, and incorporated medieval chant, modern classical, and Balinese gamelan. It's an impressively diverse body of work, though most of it doesn’t appeal to me. The album that most resonates with me is Meditation (1974), which consists of two side-long drone-based electronic tracks, quite restrained, hypnotic, and mysterious. I also enjoyed Sky Music/Mountain Music (1984).
Finally, we come back to Kraftwerk, by far the most famous and commercially successful German group ever. Long before they became electro-pop automatons, they made a few albums of genuinely weird experimental music. Their breakthrough was their fourth album, Autobahn (1974), the side-long title track of which cruised along on a "motorik" rhythmic groove similar to Neu!. The single edit became something of a novelty hit outside of Germany. Their music then became more synthetic and intentionally robotic. Their US releases had them singing in English, which for me was always a weak link. It wasn't until I heard the imported European versions, with vocals in German (which I don't understand), that I was able to appreciate them more. The three album run of Trans Europe Express (1977), The Man-Machine (1978), and Computer World (1981) is the sweet spot for me, and, the German version of “Neon Lights” is a thing of beauty.
As a fun aside, I recommend El Baile Alemán, an album of Kraftwerk covers done in a retro Latin stye by Señor Coconut y Su Conjunto (German musician and producer Uwe Schmidt aka Atom Heart).
A closing caveat: This is not meant as a definitive list of Essential German Music of the 70s. Aficionados will notice certain glaring omissions. I was expecting to talk about Faust and Tangerine Dream (and its many solo offshoots), but I was never that wild about them, even though I once had most of their records. And I never much liked Amon Düül II or Ash Ra Tempel. I went back and listened again recently to all of them, and while I recognize their importance, it's just not music I feel drawn to. Heresy, I know…