Krautrock

Krautrock designates German experimental music existing roughly between 1968 and 1977 (between the hippy era and punk).

At that time young germans wanted to do music that was completely German without any influence from other countries’ music (especially English and American rock), they also wanted to forget and break from recent past of the Second World War to make something new. So they started experimenting with new machines (synthesizers, occilators…) and even sometimes everyday objects (concrete mixer…) to make music. The idea was to make something new and experiment new ways of making music.

The main influence of krautrock was the French Musique Concrète (with Pierre Schaeffer), but also the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Both Musique Concrète and Stockhausen used real sounds (from animals, machines…) and organised them to make music.
Krautrock later influenced British synthpop and post-punk (partly thanks to young Richard Branson and his independant record label Virgin who ditributed krautrock bands in the UK). One of kraftwerks songs was used by Afrika Bambaataa in his song "Planet Rock".
Krautrock was mostly popular in France, Germany and the UK.

The most important krautrock bands were :
-Can
-Neu !
-Faust
-Amon Duul II
-Ash Ra Tempel
-Tangerine Dream
-Kraftwerk
-Harmonia
-Cluster
-Klaus Schulze
-The Organisation
-Popol Vuh