The story of the psychedelic era has been told many times in glossy print and television series, an Anglo-American tale about the crazy collision between long-haired noisemakers and LSD. Essentially what emerges is merely a Technicolor variation of good old rock and roll as it existed before all the mind-blowing special effects.

In late 60s West Germany, however, some radical musicians attempted to steer away from both US influence and their own nation’s immediate past to create a multitude of sounds that were genuinely different. Now the story of these innovators has been given the full media treatment via a recent BBC4 documentary and this coffee table book.

Krautrock: Cosmic Rock and its Legacy is an extensive series of essays and biographies about the diverse bands, producers and record labels that formed the German alternative scene between 1967-75. Lavishly illustrated, the book is an essential Christmas annual for those fans of Amon Duul II, Can, Cluster, Faust, NEU!, Popol Vuh, Tangerine Dream and the rest, whi were not quick enough to buy Julian Cope’s Krautrocksampler before it went out of print.

Like so much original music of that era, krautrock was initially played in the UK by John Peel and ultimately mass marketed by Virgin Records. The term lumped together disparate German groups, making no distinction between conventional guitar/ drums combos, flute/ bongos/ cement mixer trios and those artists exploring the kosmische possibilities of enormous new-fangled synthesisers.

Since then, the krautrock canon has come to be seen by some as hermetically sealed and timeless although, as this book illustrates, it had roots in the work of experimentalists like Stockhausen, Beuys and the Fluxus movement and the players involved had pasts and post-kraut futures in some cases every bit as embarrassing as those of their English prog rock contemporaries.

Of course Kraftwerk were the biggest name to emerge from the genre and certainly the most influential on the mainstream. Thankfully their story does not dominate the book, being presented as just one musical direction that was followed, among many others.

While it may turn away the uninitiated, this egalitarian approach is perhaps Krautrock’s greatest strength.
Simon Charterton