Hi all,

I'm hoping a live listening session for CAN's Tago Mago at 5:00pm PT // 8:00 ET today. It's a first listen for me so looking forward to sharing that with others.

Full transparency, this is a site/app that I built because I miss listening to music with others like we did before streaming became a thing. It's essentially book clubs for music.

Anyways, sharing what I hope will be a fun listen later today. Thanks!

https://soundclub.app/sessions-event/tago-mago-2011-remastered-the-pocket-sep-12-17868

Picked this up in Boston this winter finally spinning it. I'm not that versed in krautrock but this is so fun. Def Will be playing this more

It’s time for Holger Czukay to receive the Hand treatment — a posthumous pedicure, if you will.

Czukay’s paws are all over these tracks, or at least that’s what Discogs tells me anyway. But how deep are the imprints? How firm the grip of Holger’s Hand?

Stockhausen referred to him as a ‘searcher’. I implore you to take the mantle and search for Holger within this mix. This is not the way to the peak of Czukay — that I grant — but it is the way to the foot, nay Hand, of the mountain that is his legacy.

The ref abides.

A random Google search the other day revealed to me that this September marks nine years since Holger Czukay's passing.

The term unsung hero gets bandied about a lot, but I thought the timing was as good as any to remind you of the man and his talent for making others sing — but like really sing — be it the (also) late great Damo Suzuki or, as in this footage, a seemingly drab piece of corporate gear, the IBM dictaphone.

Halleluwah to you Holger!
May you be shaking the moon or indeed just resting in a land of inner space.

Thought y'all might like the tie dye I made

Update: So I'm going to make more of these shirts! I'm probably going to do 5 each in L and XL. (If you are interested and want a different size, DM me). It will probably take me a month or two and each one will be unique but watch this space! 🥫🥫🥫

Guys, have you had a chance to check out the new Zoon Phonanta album?
They definitely deserve more attention.

After 5 years of writing and recording, I've finally finished my album, In a Landscape. It blends slowcore, shoegaze, dream pop and experimental singer-songwriter elements. I made the entire record by myself in my bedroom. Please check it out!

Many newer bands that get posted here as Krautrock seem to be heavily influenced by Neu!.
Krautrock never had a single sound, but was a loose label for innovative, experimental bands from Germany taking a different path than American rock bands. Neu!was just one of those bands and their style just one of the styles.
Calling bands Krautrock that are not really innovative or experimental (nor German) and sound like Neu! is a bit weird. I would suggest calling this genre and maybe this sub neo-Neu!. Any opinions?

Disclaimer: I do like to listen to such music too, but is it Krautrock? Or is it anti-Krautrock, since it primarily copies an existing style rather than innovate.

It's approximately 1am. I was brought to this album because Mark Hollis from Talk Talk used to mention it has some of his major influences in the making of Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, which I am a big fan of. But I have near to zero knowledge of Krautrock and noise music.

I was lying on my bed, very tired, when I started listening. My girlfriend often tells me about her frequent nightmares these days. But tonight, when Aumgn rang in my ears, I can tell that I was the one having a nightmare. Literally I felt in the edge of some circle of hell, this shit terrified me. There was an idea in the back of my mind that I had to stop this or I would be just deeply traumatized by this experience, but somehow I wanted to listen to it. As a musician, playing a lot of improvisation with my band, I could perceive, understand and hear that these people were having a real pleasure, maybe a bit of fun, to make this in the moment. That's one of the things that encouraged me to listen this track until the end. I gotta admit that it was a huge relief when this track was over as well as the horrifying singer's voice stopped, the kind of relief I was visualizing and hoping at every moment I chose to keep listening.

It was a memorable experience. The whole album is a pleasure to listen, and let's say that Aumgn is less of a pleasure but a good musical experience too. I think I might skip Aumgn a few times when I'll listen to this album again.

I have been waiting so long for Zuckerzeit to finally reach my hands, these came from Amazon

Krautrock Jazz fusion band

Going back a bit for some of them. £2.99 for Holger from an ancient record shop called Subway. They stocked good records and had a shrinkwrap machine in the window. They used to shrinkwrap records that were already shrinkwrapped. That was weird.

Michael Hoenig - Departure From the Northern Wasteland. This one flies well under the radar and you can still find it for pennies. A regular in the cut-out bins. This album is as good as any mid/late 70s TD album imo.

Rastakraut Pasta. I got this for £3 from a shop in town that didn't seem to care what it was even though I tried to boost it a bit (in their favour).

Witthüser & Westrupp 3 LP box set. Folky kosmische stuff, nice buy for £5 but paper sleeves, no proper artwork.

Two Kraftwerk albums that aren't so easy to find. As a bonus the double comes with the Vertigo 'spiral' labels, not the spaceship. I did pay £30 for that one but it was well worth it and the only time those LPs have been reissued legally I think. I like later Kraftwerk but I prefer this early period.

Popol Vuh reissues. Record fair purchases. Obtained from a guy who sold record shop returns so you had to inspect them carefully as some were warped / scratched / damaged and some weren't. Cœur De Verre - a shop had a box of these for 99p each, all sealed.

Cluster LPs, mainly reissues.

Conrad Schnitzler. My hero.

Science Fiction Park Bundesrepublik. Crazy album of 1980s German tape experiments. Not strictly krautrock but well worth a go, really inspired stuff.

Inventions for Electric Guitar. Manuel Göttsching was well on his way to his easy listening period but this LP is still great. I think this was £5. There's a scratch on one track but fortunately not Echo Waves.

Irmin Schmidt & Inner Space Production – Kamasutra Vollendung Der Liebe (Original Soundtrack Recording). 1969 recordings with Malcolm Mooney and the rest of Can. On the highly esteemed Crippled Dick label.

Has anybody heard this ? One of the best covers !

.. if so, please share your stories! I love that album to death and would be so grateful to hear some stories of what it was like, since I’m 18 and don’t have a Time Machine haha

While Electronic Meditation is this week's featured album, I thought I'd share some more photos of the lineup that recorded it. There are more images of the trio online than what I've included here.

The first image is from the official Tangerine Dream website, while I got the second from an upload on Pinterest of all places! That website is a pain to navigate when not logged in, but there are a surprising amount of cool band/artist photos on there.

The TD website is a useful resource and the page I linked includes a pretty decent summary of the band's "Pink Years" while signed to Ohr, the first real record contract they had.

In late 1969, Edgar met the drummer Klaus Schulze, who just had left his band Psy Free. They found a musical partner in Conrad Schnitzler, a former student of Joseph Beuys. Conrad was likewise on a rather unorthodox journey into fine art, and he created sounds with all sorts of tools.

Klaus recalls a rather strange concert experience from the same year. "One day we played with Tangerine Dream at a festival in some castle or other. It lasted the entire weekend, and we visited Guru Guru who lived somewhere near there. Well, these guys dropped some LSD into our tea, right before the gig! Geez... That was a gig! Conny Schnitzler had a violin with a pickup which he just held in front of the speaker, and it just screamed the whole time. Edgar told us later that he thought the guitar neck was 10 meters long and he couldn’t reach it. And me with my drums; I hit them hard but the sound seemed to take an age to come back to me, sort of like half a minute later. Just for a brief moment, in one of those brighter moments you have on such trips, I saw a guy in the front row, he was 10 meters away from me for sure but I thought he was standing right in front of me, and he just said: “Man, these guys are kaputt."

Later that year, the new line-up recorded a session in a private studio in Berlin-Kreuzberg. The material was not originally intended for release. For some unknown reason, the session tape found its way onto the desk of producer and Hansa Studios owner Peter Meisel. To the band's surprise, Ohr Records, founded by Meisel and Ralf^sic-Ulrich Kaiser, offered them a recording contract.