Pell Mell- Marburg

I'm going to change things up a bit this week, with a German album that's far from Krautrock. Pell Mell was a band from the town of Marburg, Germany, and they titled their 1972 debut after their hometown. There were 4 more over the next decade, and then they disappeared into rarity, with only very limited availability for their albums. Members were Thomas Schmitt (vocals, violin, flute, Mellotron), Otto Pusch (piano, organ), Bruno Kniedmeijer (drums), Rudolf Schön (vocals, percussion, guitar), and Jörg Götzfried (bass).

The opening is called "The Clown and The Queen", with some guitar riffing and ARP keyboards getting aggressive right off the bat. Unfortunately, as soon as the vocalist comes in, he delivers a poor, forced performance. It's a shame, as the music is a pretty good fusion of ELP with blues rock guitar (and it works surprisingly.) The next track, "Moldau", actually samples Israel's national anthem for a few bars of flute music. Otherwise, it's a nice instrumental flute piece, nothing wrong there. "Friend" keeps things going, and it's really more of the beginning of this album. Bad vocal, great keyboards and guitar. There's a healthy mix of violin and flute too. Really, I have no need to write about the B side tracks "City Monster" and "Alone" as their more of the same.

Bleh. This album has many sources to draw upon, from blues to symphonic prog to classical to Israeli anthems. Sadly, they just don't work all that well. The album is well made, with a few cool passages, but lacks any reach out and grab you elements. Marburg meets the minimum, and is nothing more than that.

This one is alright, but remained obscure for a reason. Grade: C

How Krautrock Came to Be

For something often so sparse and inorganic, Krautrock has odd roots. Most of the inspiration came out of the Psychedelic seen of the late 60's, like most Prog Rock. Germany had as much of a counterculture as anywhere at the time, and American and British Psych groups got wide recognition. Where the Krautrockers began to split off (circa 1970) was their incorporation of a distinctly German identity in the music. Having been twice robbed of a national feeling after the two world wars, German youths were ready to forge something new.

Politics played a role in the making of Krautrock. Many of the best known groups and the most obscure tangents were socialist, communist, or even anarchist in nature. While Krautrock genraly de-emphasizes lyrics, this is reflected in the music. Atonal, irregular, and jarring, Krautrock often grates at the ear due to its rejection of many traditional parts of music theory. As a result, Krautrock became amongst the more liberal and anti-establishment of the music scenes of the 70's.

Additionaly, like many other Prog hotbeds (Italy, Spain), the Germans put a bit of their own music heritage into the music. For centuries some of the most revolutionary composers including Beethoven, Brahms, and Wagner were German nationals. This tradition is both upheld and subverted. On one hand, there was a rejection of the old ways to achieve a new form of art, a German tradition. On the other hand, these prior episodes were emotional and romanticist, this time the revolution was far from it. Krautrock, in essence, is a post modern spiritual successor to prior achievements from the country.

The mutli-layered origins of Krautrock often worked in conjunction to make some truly unique music. Though the genre was effectual killed of by Punk in the late 70's, a resurgence in the CD age has benefited the old groups well. Due to the lack of synthesizers and lyrics, Krautrock is amongst the freshest and least dated pieces of classic prog.

Faust-Faust IV

Faust are a group of well known Krautrock eccentrics. Their style combined minimalism with rawness, displaying lots of fuzzy guitars and heavy rythym. Their first 3 albums were acclaimed by listeners, but sold piss poorly. With Rudolf Sonsa (Guitar, Keys, Vocals), Hans Joachim Irmler (organ), Jean-Hervé Péron (Bass), "Zappi" Diermaier (Drums), and Gunter Wüsthoff (sax, synths) this band of Germany's headed to England to record their 1973 Faust IV. The result is often considered one of the best Krautrock albums of all time.

The first track is and ode to their music, entitled "Krautrock". This song is the EMBODIMENT of minimalism, with a repeated guitar riff and keyboard for 7 whole minute before the drums even show up. Over it's 12 minute run, the track takes you into a trance like state and is one of the most enveloping works of music I've ever heard. Afterward is the humorous "The Sad Skinhead", which is a quick song that has a circus feel to it. The two contrast nicely. This is followed by the low key, "Jennifer". This song is a drone like trip, driven by the bass with a little guitar riff on top. After a while, it decays into noise. It's a strange part of this album, but one of it's highlights due to the spaciness.

Flip the album over, and we have an instrumental medley called "Just a Second" / "Picnic on a Frozen River, Deuxième Tableau", with is sort of a funk-Krautrock, as unlikely as it sounds. Electronic bird sounds abound. Then there's the bouncing "Giggy Smile", which is irreverent, bass heavy, and every minimalistic. It's the best track on the album due to it's combination of the minimalism with accessibility. "Läuft...Heißt das es läuft oder es kommt bald...Läuft" follows, which is really a violin riff with some fake french on top. The weirdness of this album just keeps coming and coming, with the finale "It's a Bit of a Pain" capping things off as an accoutic ballad on this album of tangents. It's then subverted with an ear-destroying noise in the chorus.

Faust IV is quirky. Less avant garde than its predecessors, the album finds strength by making the strange accessible. There's groove, even dancebility, to many of the parts. Not many prog rock albums have that quality. It's got all sorts of twists and changes of mood, but what it lacks in consistency it makes up for in charm.

This album is a bit like that cool old man that lives next door. Grade: A

Can- Future Days

After several albums of all out weirdness, for the fifth effort, Krautrock kings Can took a drastic change in direction. They eschewed the avant garde and fuzzy elements of their music and made an ambient album. 1973's Future Days took the band's prior minimalism and made it the focal point of the music, Czukay, Karoli, Leibezit and Schmidt make their instruments recede into nothingness. Damo Sazuki features less prominently, and he would leave the group after the album to become a Jehovah's Witness.

The album fades in with some very distorted symbols for the title track. There is almost no formal instrumentation here, just some strange effects layered on each other and a wispy vocal. Can defiantly sees the future as a fairly sterile, orderly place. Afterward comes the aptly titled "Spray", with an ocean like feel conveyed via the washed out keyboards and rhythmically pounding drums. ?It's a bit more active, but it still has that empty and power full feel. Juxtaposed in the mix is the three minute (the rest are all 9+) little pop dity "Moonshake." It's a nonsensical song, and although it's not to bad, it kills the mood of the album. This should have been a single.

On the B side is the side-long suite "Bel Air", which has many shorter movements instead of one long one. It starts of similarly to the title track, with even matching maracas. Then all of a sudden the rhythm section seals the show, with some layered keys and guitar chords to liven the mix. All goes quiet for a heavily fuzzy middle, then farm sounds, and afterwards there's cycle back to the beginning. This is a far cry from their prior side longers, and even casual fans might enjoy this. Good background music/

This is one of the first ambient albums ever created. Ahead of its time in many ways, Future Days is one of a handful of blueprint albums for electronic music. With just light sprinklings of lyrics, guitar, and even formal keyboards, the sparseness is the entirety of the album's embodiment. That does make it difficult to get in to the record until several listens, but there's a lot on offer. Not quite a Tago Mago, though.

This album is like a cloud, an interesting and beautiful object that passes by with so little fanfare it barely goes noticed. Grade: B+

Krautrock: Germany's Strange Experiment

Barring the UK, no nation on this earth produced more classic progressive rock than Germany. In addition, their particular brand of Prog rock is quite different from any other, distinguishing itself by the weird. This month, Germany will be the country of honor.

"Krautrock" is a term coined by the British Press and is often rejected by the bands the label applies to. It's not a very specific tag, with a vast variety of artists under the genre. It it's most pure sense, the term means prog rock from Germany, but there is much German prog that isn't Krautrock. There are three main indicators of something fallin into this genre. First, there is a raw, underpoduced feel to the Krautrock albums. Secondly, minimalism, whether in the sound itself or in the composition itself, often features. Lastly, there is a large electronic element to the music. The organic mood of many symphonic prog or folk prog albums will be absent from Krautrock almost without exception.

This still leaves room for a great deal of variety. This is Krautrock:


As is this:


The first kind, exemplified by bands like Neu!, Kraftwerk, and Popol Vuh, is what I call "Soft Krautrock", and beat Brian Eno to the creation of Ambient Music by a good 6 or 7 years. The latter by bands like Gila, Amon Duul II, and Guru Guru, is "Hard Krautrock", which is more guitar driven. To complicate it, a great number of the bands did some of both.

Some of the most wacky, avant garde, and silly progressive rock came from Germany. With just three album reviews, I can just barely scrape the surface of all the wonderful music the country has to offer.