For no special reason, I've recently got out a good number of KrautRock CDs in the last couple of weeks. Get ready for some unsolicited reviews!
Can: Soundtracks. Generally fine, but the real standout is the full version of Mother Sky. This track is so freaking primal, it really stirs a man's blood. Holger's tape arrangement is pretty funny, with the track fading in mid-solo, only to start again a couple of times further on, with a brief interlude where Damo croons some. I've read criticisms of Michael Karoli's guitar work in this track not being precise enough, but I think it makes it all the more angry and animal.
Can: Cannibalism 3. This is a CD of tracks from various Can solo works. Holger is daft like we already knew, Jaki and Michael's stuff is okay, but I was most impressed by Irmin. He always seemed the more academic and reserved one to me, but he's actually something of a crooner. That said, most of the tracks have this nagging sense that the production has overtaken the music, something you get a lot with past-it acts. Buy a recent Elvis Costello album and you'll see what I mean. The only thing that approached the tension and immediacy of something like Mother Sky is Rapido de Noir, by Irmin and Bruno Spoerri, with train sounds pleasingly processed accompanying Irmin's trademark organ assault. Reminiscent of Tangerine Dream.
Amon Duul II: Yeti. Like Gong, Amon Duul II were just a bunch of smelly hippies, but unlike Gong, they were more to the point and spared us the pixie whimsy (flower heads for hats!). The arrangements are generally interesting and the feel is almost Mothers of Invention at times. Not that anyone seems to be able to stay in time or even play their instrument. Even so, compellingly different. Much better than Phallus Dei, the other album by them I have heard.
Harmonia '76: Tracks and Traces. I had reservations about listening to this, given how disappointing the Cluster and Eno collaboration was, and because this CD, while recorded in 1976, wasn't released in 1997, which made me suspicious that is was no good. However, Harmonia + Eno actually is quite good. The selection rambles a bit, and you get the feeling nothing was ever properly finished, but it's still worth checking out.
Tangerine Dream: Alpha Centauri and Atem. High school staples but hadn't heard them in ages. Listening now, I realise how little synthesisers had to do with these early albums. There were some there, but what I used to think was synth is actually just organs and mellotrons through various effects. Still spacey though. Alpha Centauri was an improvement on Electronic Meditation (their fairly rubbish first album), but they didn't really get it together until Zeit, which album I believe is their best, in fact probably in the Krautrock top 5*. Atem is also very good, with the second track Fauni Gena being a kind of sinister version of Debussy's Apres Midi d'un Faun. Despite the tape hiss, very well produced (by Conny Planck, again, I assume), especially the crazy vocal bits on Wahn. Also quite like Chris Franke's drumming, whenever he gets away from the Moog and behind the tubs.
Alastair Galbraith: Long Wires in Dark Museums vol. 2. Not Kraut by any means, but in the experimental section where I got the Krautrock from, so I picked it up anyway.** Galbraith is an ageing Dunedin Flying Nunnite gone avant, and this CD features him and someone else playing cello and violin drones at excessive length in a couple of galleries. The second track kind of works, but the first features about 10 minutes of cello-scraping without anything happening. I know, I'm supposed to be listening to the subtle harmonic changes, and revelling in Galbraith's exquisite minimalism, but really it's not very interesting to hear on CD, and the audience's rather brief applause suggests it wasn't much fun to listen to in person. Hope they laid on free booze!
* With which I would also include Can's Tago Mago, Kraftwerk's Radioactivity, Cluster's Zuckerzeit, and Neu!'s first album. In case you're wondering, I think Faust were obscenely overrated.
** I find 'experimental' to be an awkward name for it. Strikes me as another way of saying 'not very good, but they're trying something different so we ought to indulge them'. All the albums I've reviewed are fully realised works (well, aside from Galbraith's but that's another story), and they use techniques that were established decades earlier. There's no fractals generating tunes; there's no robot voices singing 'Daisy'. How is this stuff experimental?? At the very least they should call it 'Unconventional'.
Posted by stuart at May 19, 2007 3:32 PM