- Album: 'To German Electronic Music 1970-80'
- Label: 'Bureau B'
- Genre: 'Seventies'
- Release Date: '21.3.25.'- Catalogue No: 'BB478'
Our Rating:
Krautrock Eruption is the soundtrack to Wolfgang Seidel's book of the same name, that explores what he considers to be the 50 most influential Krautrock records, this album showcases 12 songs from those 50 albums, to give the listener a glimpse at the breadth and scope of the music that has come to be known as Krautrock or Kosmiche music.
I haven't read the book, but am certainly intrigued, the movement tried to find a way out of the post war decimation of Germany in the 60's, as it emerged into 70's a divided nation. All the acts featured on this compilation are legendary in their own right, the most legendary Krautrock act of all, Kraftwerk are however missing from this compilation.
The compilation opens with Ballet Statique by Conrad Schnitzler that takes a very simple repeating synth line and allows it to slowly evolve, with other things added for you to gaze at the seemingly motionless ballerina.
I've Heard That One Before/Watch Your Step is an almost Jazz piece by Faust revolving around muted trumpets in an field of ambient noises, eventually joined by a dislocated drum pattern, this is unsettling and compelling in equal measure, long before the glockenspiel adds another twist to things.
Foreign Affairs by Eno Moebius Roedelius has squelchy synths with a semi classical string part, that comes and goes while those loops build and mutate in gloriously unsettling ways.
Emphasis by Harald Grosskopf uses repetition to make this sound like an early techno dance tune, all be it a reasonably chilled out one that has its head in the clouds.
21:32 by Cluster is like a phased recording of going through a long underground train tunnel, the different sounds rearranged and mutated, this would soundtrack some very murky underground events, buzzing noises, dark effusions, horror calamity, deep distressed tones.
Rastakraut Pasta by Moebius & Plank has a deep dubby bassline for all sorts of weird and wonderful effects to fire off from, super slow drums, weird tonalities from analogue synths, manipulated sonar noises, Conny Plank plays the studio he so carefully built, the sonic machine so important in creating so many monumental albums, the sound envelops you.
The second disc opens with Glaubersalz by Roedelius whose key tones are very 17th century virginal, with a slowly shifting tonal pattern, from the synths underpinning the tune, for most of the tune it could be a classical piece until it shifts from equal temperament into a more experimental realm.
Minimal Tape 3/7.2 by Pyrolator sounds hugely influential on modern dance music and the 80's soundtracks of Harold Faltermayer, it feels like it gallops along and has an amphetamine edge to it.
Himmelblau by Reichmann is slow long tones leading into a wigged-out synth symphonic tone poem, over a syrupy club beat.
Kluster 2 by Kluster is a short edit of dark eruptions of noises, tectonic shifting synth worlds, whale sounds, spirographic guitar whorls, ambient shifts into other realms.
Apricot Brandy II by Gunter Schickert sounds like he's downed a couple of bottles rather than a couple of glasses of that Apricot Brandy, rather out their spectral flourishes of guitars and synths schnapping at your brain.
The album closes with Falter-Lamento by Asmus Teitchens a slow lament for sulky synth players everywhere
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