Carla and Brad Talk About Krautrock

Today we accept a listener's invite up to Hamburg, for a visit with A.R. + Machines.

Achim Reichel grew up near the docks, listening to sea shanties.  He found work at the Star-Club waiting tables, but soon enough he was on its stage playing with the Rattles—and running with Lennon & McCartney.

Come 1971 he ditched his bandmates for a tape machine.  Krautrock followed.  Turns out Achim was just passing through on his way to other sounds and traditions.  But this green leg of his musical journey was rich and rewarding, even if it took 20 years for critics and listeners to get it.

Join us as we tell the story of A.R. + Machines!

In today's episode, Carla and Brad tip their caps to the ten or more young Bavarians who stood up to Mom and Dad, demanded money for a swank downtown apartment, and most assuredly drove their neighbors nuts with the ensuing band rehearsals. 

Well, maybe we tip our caps more to the parents who funded this grand and glorious adventure.

Musical Münchner communards choose attitude over aptitude.  Drum circles and pudding plots abound.  Push the levels all the way up into the red, while we celebrate Amon Düül and their first record, Psychedelic Underground!

It's a tale as old as time.  Boy meets Moog III synthesizer.  Boy drops a wad of cash to buy it.  Boy and Moog blissfully record two studio albums and a film soundtrack together.  Boy abruptly breaks up with Moog and finds religion.

Boy is, of course, gifted and accomplished pianist Florian Fricke.  His project, and at times even his alter ego, is Popol Vuh.  In this episode we do some Before and After sampling: i.e., we talk through the records on either side of the Moog separation. 

**SPOILER ALERT**: we like one of these records a lot more than the other.

Fricke died far too early, but his was a life *very* well lived.  Dig in deep with Popol Vuh in this latest, oversized episode of Carla and Brad Talk About Krautrock!  

Schoolyard friends Manuel Göttsching and Hartmut Enke loved the Beatles and the blues ... like everybody else in a Berlin rock band in the late '60s.  But then they got hold of Blue Cheer's record and some blow-the-doors-off British amps.   Soon wunderkind drummer Klaus Schulze was at their door, sniffing around the new equipment.  Things were gonna get LOUD.  

Ash Ra Tempel's soundquakes and soundscapes show off a dynamic range that is unmatched in Krautrock.  Come join us as we talk about the band, with special attention given to their first two records.

Enter a world of anvils and dream machines, of universal vibrations and floral mortality.  Enter ... the Tempel.

No figure loomed larger over Krautrock, as a genre, than legendary producer/ sound engineer Konrad "Conny" Plank ... and we've been looking for an opportunity to talk about him.  Then we discovered the Rastakraut Pasta LP that he and Dieter Moebius recorded and released in 1980.  Problem solved!

From behind the board in Cologne's Rhenus Studio and then his own converted farmhouse in Wolperath, Plank put on tape some (most?) of the best German kosmische and electronic music of the '70s.  From there he went on to develop the sound signatures of post-punk acts like Devo, Eurythmics, and Ultravox.

Gone too soon at age 47, Plank is (and damn well should be) remembered as Krautrock's Midwife.  Join us as we explore his life and career and then go track by track through Rastakraut Pasta on Episode 16 of CBK!

We interrupt this podcast's regularly scheduled programming for a SPECIAL REPORT:

We've made a Krautrock Playlist.

The original idea was to have a "song draft": having dug deep enough into Krautrock, we would take turns claiming songs for ourselves.  We figured this way we'd learn what each of us likes in particular, and what we like best.

What happened is we came up with a list of 44 songs -- FORTY-FOUR -- that generally holds together not just as a cohesive cross-section of the genre (with apologies to Popol Vuh), but also as one hell of a mix to queue up on Spotify.

Did we hit all the good stuff?  Hell, no, and we know we have much more to learn and explore.  But we made a good start.  

Some stats, for those who are interested:

Song counts by artist: Can (7!), Kraftwerk (5), Neu! (5), Faust (4), Harmonia (4), La Düsseldorf (4), Amon Düül II (2), Cluster (2), Guru Guru (2), Moebius + Plank (2), Agitation Free (1), Amon Düül (1), Ash Ra Tempel (1), Brainticket (1), Holger Czukay (1), Tangerine Dream (1), Xhol Caravan (1).

Song counts by credited musicians: Klaus Dinger (11), Holger Czukay (10), Michael Rother (10), Dieter Moebius (8), Hans-Joachim Roedelius (6).

It's 1969.  Accomplished Belgian classical/ jazz/ R&B pianist Joel Vandroogenbroeck and English rock guitarist Ron Bryer have ditched their Basel-based blue-eyed soul band and will shortly link up with lysergic femme fatale Dawn Muir. 

The result?  A square of light, a circle of thought, a triangle of NOTHING.  It's BRAINTICKET!

Join us as we talk about Brainticket's wild and wooly debut record, Cottonwoodhill.  The band brings the organ crushes, guitar chucking, jackhammers, rapturous spoken-word poetry, and some freaking sweet flutework.  We meet them in the middle with Gil Scott-Heron, ChatGPT, and High Fidelity.

STAY!  GO!  Actually, stay.  This one's pretty fun.

Accomplished jazz practitioners hear the siren song of psychedelic rock and find themselves a young, ripping guitarist to plug in with.  Hold on: are we talking about Can again?

Not at all.  It's Guru Guru today: three amazing musicians laying down the soundtrack for when the aliens arrive.  Or put differently, "music that's intended to mess with the cerebellum."  (h/t David Stubbs)

The Pep Boys were Manny, Mo, and Jack.  Mani, Uli, and Ax brought some pep of their own.  Come listen with us to their second LP, Hinten.  Might just be we'll talk a fair bit about the debut album UFO, too.

In the spring of 1973, guitarist Michael Rother looks in on two old acquaintances at their ramshackle farmhouse/ recording studio in Forst.  Rother hopes to tour the UK with his current band, Neu!, and he *thinks* Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius of Cluster might provide just the juice he needs for his live act ...

Now what was it John Lennon said about life and making other plans?  The Neu! tour never materialized, and Rother's trip to the country yielded only Krautrock's preeminent supergroup, in the form of HARMONIA. 

Harmonia introduced Rother's discipline, structure, and guitar to the Cluster duo's improvisational synth subversion, and boy, oh boy were the results terrific.  The clash of work styles meant it couldn't last, but for three years at least, Harmonia were arguably "the world's most important rock band"  (h/t B. Eno).

Join us as we tell the Harmonia story, giving specific attention to the band's sparkling 1975 release, Deluxe!

Today we depart from our usual programming to post a LIVE SHOW ALERT.

Turns out Brad sneaked off to London last month to catch surviving member of Neu! Michael Rother's live performance at the Clapham Grand!  Joining Michael on stage were Hans Lampe (of La Düsseldorf, on drums), Franz Bargmann (of Camera, on guitar) and electronic composer and recent Rother collaborator Vittoria Maccabruni.

Special guests included Hot Chip, known Krautrock exponent Stephen Morris, of Joy Division and New Order, *and* Paul Weller.

Join us for a deep dive on the show.  Tangents and digressions of course abound -- we are who we are -- but this episode's lodestar and our guiding light is Herr Rother: cracking musician, King of Krautrock, and lovely human being.

Here's to you, Michael.  Get well soon!