The Krautrock Cosmology

No German musician of that generation accepts the word KRAUTROCK, or the word as it is understood by the English writers. And fair enough. None of the Krautrock groups are actually Krautrock. Indeed, in the very unlikely event that any of them were to nod in assent and agree of themselves, 'Yes, Krautrock. That's us in a nutshell', your respect for them would fall away. How are Kraftwerk, who ruthlessly stripped away both guitars and hair from their sound and appearance, Krautrock? Can's Jaki Liebezeit is equally bemused that such a phrase should apply to Can, who were ... well, Can. Faust composed a track by the title of 'Krautrock' for their album Faust IV, but as an act of deep sarcasm at the English-imported tag, which they found both insulting and injurious. Conrad Schnitzler, who detested hippie culture, also titled a piece of his 'Krautrock', as if to say, 'Listen. It patently isn't.'  How could a single word encapsulate both the spacey, ambient extremes of Ash Ra Tempel and the heavy industrial collage of Faust? The faux-bourgeois placidity of Kraftwerk and the angry, messy agitation of Amon Duul? The ecclesiastical heights of Popol Vuh and the sacrilegious depths of Can? The extreme, maximal, suffocating noise of Kluster and the spare, horticular, ambient beauty of Cluster?

Eschewing the Anglo-American jazz/blues tradition, they took their inspiration from elsewhere: the mysticism of the East; the fractured classicism of Stockhausen; the pneumatic repetition of industry, and the dense forests of the Rhineland; the endless winding of Autobahns.