Krautrock: Cosmic Rock and Its Legacy

In the sublime dialectic of the kosmische, titanic and inhuman struggles are mysteriously pared with a serene acceptance of an underlying unity. This deeply psychedelic logic produces the peculiar fusion of drive and drift that characterizes the more mystical dimensions of Krautrock. – Erik Davis

These words are from the author of TechGnosis and it should come as no surprise that he, as a person deeply intrigued by the mystical dimensions of cyberculture, is an ardent believer in the transcending potential of kosmische musik. And Davis is not alone.

Krautrock: Cosmic Rock and its Legacy constitutes a new contribution to a growing body of literature that attempts to define and celebrate the music of a generation that came of age in Germany during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Thirteen writers – Davis, David Stubbs, Stephen Thrower, David Keenan and many others – contribute to this Black Dog Publishing book and the result is more than satisfactory.

This collective effort is a hybrid of some sort – it is both a reference guide to kosmische musik and the first available coffee table book on Krautrock. This is not meant to be derogatory in any way. Krautrock: Cosmic Rock and its Legacy is the first book of its kind that combines engaging content with dozens of photos and full-color illustrations of album covers and posters. It is not the kind of book you want sitting on a shelf far out of reach.

Krautrock: Cosmic Rock and its Legacy focuses on the usual constellation of bands and solo artists (Amon Düül II, Ash Ra Tempel, Can, The Cosmic Jockers, Faust, Neu, Popol Vuh, and Tangerine Dream to name but a few). Like Eric Deshayes’ Au delà du rock and Julian Cope’s Krautrocksampler, the book consists mainly of band, record label and producer profiles. The presence of thirteen contributors, however, provides a rich (albeit uneven at times) range of perspectives and approaches which certainly contribute to making this book an enjoyable read.

Stubbs, the author of Fear of Music, contributes an opening chapter which serves as an introduction to Krautrock. In just a few pages, Stubbs can only scratch the surface yet he still manages to situate the movement within its historical context while highlighting the paradoxical relationship that bound the German and Anglo-American music scenes together.

Ken Hollings then offers an original and arresting piece titled “Background Radiation: The West German Republic Tunes in to the Cosmos.” This second chapter looks at the site where the cosmos, the static sound of radio and music intersect. Hollings takes us from Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s Hitler: A Film from Germany to Stockhausen, Fluxus and Kraftwerk in an effort to document Germany’s fascination with space and sound. This is a great piece and Hollings cannot go wrong by quoting Stockhausen who once said that “we are all transistors in the literal sense.”

Davis develops the topic of the kosmische further in the next chapter by focusing on semantics and philosophical conceptions of the cosmos. He writes, “the cosmic is never just the brute fact of the material universe, but the cluster of feelings, imaginings, and spiritual intuitions that arise when we try to wrap our minds and hearts around that immense fact – or to make art from such inevitably fragile wrappings.”Davis is necessarily mostly interested in the kosmische musik branch of Krautrock and this serves his argument well.

Krautrock: Cosmic Rock and its Legacy, by focusing on the usual constellation of Krautrock bands, strictly adheres to its 1967 to 1975 timeline. It is true that 1975 is a landmark year with Faust disbanding, Tangerine Dream moving further away from its pink years and Ralf-Ulrich Kaiser disappearing into obscurity with his Kosmische Musik label. But the mid-1970s is also the birth of Sky Records and the continuation of a tradition of innovative music. The post-1975 Krautrock years will hopefully find their place in the literature sooner or later.

Until then, flip through the pages of Krautrock: Cosmic Rock and its Legacy. It is well worth your time.