Soul Jazz's new release Deutsche Elektronische Musik is a double CD of experimental German Rock and Electronic music from 1972-83. It's better known as krautrock.

Radical collectives and extreme noise experimentalists created disparate forms of music all worlds away from their own country's schlager pop while avoiding complete subservience to rock's American blueprint. They were influenced as much by Karl Heinz Stockhausen and Joseph Beuys as by psychedelia and the revolutionary activities of the counterculture.

NEU! chose minimalism – stripping out verse/ chorus chord changes, creating a perfect beat and, in 'Hallo Gallo', sticking with it. Tangerine Dream went another way, taking an early Pink Floyd template and synthing it up to make it even spacier. Popol Vuh delved into drones, microtones and pentatonic scales to create soundscapes for Werner Herzog films, the ethereal theme from Aguirre Wrath of God being a highlight of the second disc. Can, meanwhile, combined edited free jams with infectious funky grooves while Faust also used tape editing but with added cement mixer to create their own music concrete (though 'It's A Rainy Day Sunshine Girl' on disc one sees them at their most accessible - it's pure Velvets).

There is a vast array of cosmic electronica, pastoral tranquillity and acid guitar jamming on offer here, from the glorious imperfection of Harmonia's primitive sequencing through LA Dusseldorf's 'Rheinita' – motorik meets Ski Sunday – to conceptual mavericks like Conrad Schnitzler, solo ambience from members of Cluster and the lysergic spirit of Timothy Leary courtesy of Ash Ra Temple.

Much of the best material is instrumental but the voice eventually takes over. Can's quirky 'I Want More' is perhaps the point where mass experimentalism ends and chart success for some beckons, namely David Bowie who, aided by Eno, came along and imposed a real front man on all this stuff with his Berlin trilogy of albums.

While Kraftwerk are noticeable absentees, overall it's a fine collection from a time and place where new bands didn't lazily merge back catalogue genres, singers were subordinate to musicians and the whole thing couldn't be learnt at stage school and polished to perfection by Pro Tools.
Simon Charterton