Kraut Rock Vs. Prog Rock

(Krautrock wins.)

Kraut wuld be bands like Kraftwerk, Cluster, Neu, Can, stuff in that vein.

Prog is for the geeks, Kraut is for the freaks.

I like both but I'm going for the Prog.

sure, and red noise, catherine ribiero & alpes, fille qui mousse, semool, ame son...

Yes, Krautrock is better. Achim Reichel, Agitation Free, Can, Amon Duul, Harmonia, Walter Wegmuller ...

But on the prog side you have Soft Machine, Aksak Maboul ...

Prog is soft, middle class, and has TOO. Many. NOTES. I don't consider Pink Floyd to be prog at all--they are arena rock, plain and simple, and their early stuff if closer to Krautrock than it is to prog (consider Interstellar OVerdrive etc etc).

Not even close to being prog. have you actually listened to any BOC? Don't lie now.

No, "Burnin' for You" is a pop song, one of two BOC numbers that charted, built on a sneaky reggae pattern and like most songs that Buck Dharma had something to do with, owes more to surf music and lyrical guitar melody. You're mixing up the background vocals and some fairly straight keyboard work with mellotron. In any case, King Crimson's old use of mellotron is completely different than anything Blue Oyster Cult did.

Blue Oyster Cult was also very blues-based, with many straight rock and roll riffs and heavy boogie patterns built into their albums. King Crimson was about as far from that as one could get and still be on the same planet, unless you count "Ladies of the Road," which was kind of like a one-off from "Islands."

Anyway, sorry, that's not on topic but there sure are a lot of Krautrock threads this morning.

(Also, to answer the question, I think there's too much overlap to answer properly. I've never been quite sure of the parameters that punctuate the continuum between spacerock and prog and dronerock and krautrock - the above dilemma just underlining the fact that "krautrock" is more than just a geographical description of bands from Germany, blah blah etc.)

VAN. DER. GRAAF. GENERATOR.

I missed out on 'prog' and the little I know, the less I want to.

So, k/rock 4 me.

And look, I'm so proud of myself, I didn't rise to the bait of asking what "middle class" sounds like.

The Guide to the Progressive Rock Genres
http://www.gepr.net/genre2.html

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
ORGANIZATION
ROCK
Symphonic Rock/Progressive Rock/"Prog"
Forms Tangential and Peripheral to Symphonic Rock/Progressive Rock
Avant Progressive/Avant Rock
On the Way to Jazz ...
JAZZ / JAZZ ROCK / FUSION
Jazz Pioneers
Fusion
Kozmigroov
Funk
Experimental, Free and Avant-Jazz
Indo-Fusion
On the Way to Folk ...
FOLK / FOLK ROCK
Styles of Folk and Folk Rock
The Influence of Traditional and Ethnic Music
On the Way to Electronic and Beyond ...
ELECTRONIC
Pioneers
Schools of Electronic Music
UNCLASSIFIED
APPENDIX (Heavy Metal)
CREDITS

Is there another space-rock band called Quarkspace or has he really badly misspelled Quickspace?

US band inspired by Hawkwind

Among the truly hardcore "prog" fans, most would find something to like and dislike about both.

Prog is for geeks, Kraut is for freaks
I'm not sure it ain't exactly the opposite (and I don't necessarily mean that to be complimentary to Prog)

Prog is soft, middle class, and has TOO. Many. NOTES.
Yep. Prog wins.

The problem with the debate is that kraut and prog don't have unifying sounds- there is no "prog sound" or "kraut sound." Kraut is just German rock from the late sixties to the mid seventies (and arguably the bands after). Tangerine Dream has nothing musically to do with Popol Vuh which has nothing to do with Faust, which in turn has little to do with Neu! or Amon Duul- there is no genre to speak of. Kraut is just a broad geographical category, like say, Spanish or Italian pop/rock.

So vs? What's that even supposed to look like? A bunch of desparate bands and genres from the world vs. a bunch of desparate bands from Germany?

Not really. Not just any German rock band from the period is considered "Krautrock." The term generally refers to a particular canon of bands. And while these bands were perhaps stylistically disparate, they also had a lot of commonalities: outer space music connotations, wildness and/or aesthetic extremes of one form or another, etc.

Q/ Mojo Classic "The Ultimate Collectors Edition"

The Story of Prog Rock
starring

Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes, King Crimson, Hawkwind, ELP, Radiohead...& more

on sale 15th July

1. British
2. German
3. American
4. Italian
5. French

Well, sure, there are German bands from that time period that aren't considered Krautrock (the Eloys and Grobschnitts). This technicality aside, though, I think James' points are basically OTM...people tend to be lumpers more than splitters, placing all of these bands under the broad "Krautrock" rubric in a way that allows them to push aside and ignore the often considerable stylistic and individual differences musically between them.

In my experience, people are often all too eager to turn off their critical faculties just to 'embrace the labels' (Prog being reflexively the 'lame' label and Kraut being the 'hip' label), instead of simply acknowledging that, no, Tangerine Dream doesn't really sound like Can, and Can doesn't really sound like classic-period Popol Vuh (whose music during their prime I would neither describe as 'outer spacey' or 'wild' or 'aesthetically extreme'), and if you like Affenstunde you don't have to feel obligated to like Seligspreisung (or vice versa), etc., just because Julian Cope did many years ago. I know I sure don't--I think the former is twaddle and the latter is stunning.

But to the larger issue, which I think is what James was getting at, fans who are truly into this era of rock music and have a taste for something that went beyond the regular pop format of song, don't waste their time getting hung up over whether or not the band/music they enjoy was "too Prog" or "very Kraut". Or whether they should feel cognitive dissonance if they love both Genesis and Amon Duul 2 (or Grobschnitt and Amon Duul 2). Or if they should feel uncomfortable because the opening of "Phaedra" sounds closer to an instrumental outtake from Dark Side of the Moon than it does to Psychedelic Underground.

Soft Machine? Maybe the real early stuff could be compared to Faust? A little bit?
King Crimson???

x-post

(By "aesthetic extremes," I'm not talking about something like Henry Cow, but something more related to the wildness factor.)

My point is that if a narrow definition of Krautrock includes, Can, Faust, Neu, Cluster, Kraftwerk, Amon Duul I & II, T-Dream, and Ash Ra Tempel, wouldn't it make just as much sense to pick the best 10 UK bands across all genres from the same period and define an equally arbitrary genre grouping? You could arguably find common ground between the Incredible String Band and Hawkwind or Funkadelic and the Byrds but these commonalities would also be due to some kind of national zeitgeist rather than any tangible stylistic similarities.

Well, with 'prime period' (well, what I consider to be their best) Popol Vuh, I was referring to albums such as Einsjager and Siebensjager, Seligpreisung, Letzte Tage Letzte Nachte...hell, even up to Agape Agape. These albums don't strike me as 'outer spacey' (probably because they are acoustic and consist of guitar/piano/drums), are generally laid back/mellow and not what I would consider 'aesthetically extreme'. Another example: say, the Harmonia albums (i.e., collaboration between Cluster and Michael Rother of Neu!), which are pretty laid back, minimalistic, and un-wild.

But I think that such a definition is essentially pulling the cream of the crop out of the scene and using that as an after-the-fact category.

My point is that if a narrow definition of Krautrock includes, Can, Faust, Neu, Cluster, Kraftwerk, Amon Duul I & II, T-Dream, and Ash Ra Tempel, wouldn't it make just as much sense to pick the best 10 UK bands across all genres from the same period and define an equally arbitrary genre grouping?

also, your defining characteristics "Space music," wildness, aesthetic extremes ... could just as well define Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, the Dead, and other decidedly un-krautrock bands. So what does this intangible element of kraut actually consist of? I think it's one of those "I know it when I hear it" qualities but I can't pretend that it's something completely distinct and independent from the label of progressive rock.

Walter comments = positively OTM (with how I view it, at least). With acknowledgement that yes, there are definite commonalities as well between some of the bands' approaches and they were all part of the same zeitgeist/period, it seems to me there's also a lot of 'post-hoc'ness in defining what constitutes a Krautrock band.

And to be fair, you'll find a lot of the same phenomena amongst Prog (and probably any other passionate musical fandom). In prog rock circles, fans tend to go the other way--splitters rather than lumpers (hence the infinitessimal sub-genre categorizations of the GEPR described above). This is in part influenced by tastes: the bands a person likes has to be oh-so-different from the bands they don't. There are also the 'hip' subgenres in Prog (i.e., the stalwart representatives being bands like Henry Cow, Magma, Soft Machine) vs. 'lame' Prog (a.k.a. Symphonic prog, the Prog that everybody thinks of as "Prog Rock"--Yes, Genesis, ELP, etc.), which in many cases is deemed so because it's the most mainstream representation of that music (i.e., in terms of commercial success and popular familiarity) and prog, like any other music fandom, has people who want to feel unique and different in what they listen to, so that involves some distancing from the mainstream representatives.

Of course, there are certainly stylistic clusters within both Prog and Kraut circles, but I think in each case, there is also a substantive deal of taste validation underlying the construction of these genre and subgenre labels, that doesn't have much to do with the actual stylistic homo-/heterogeneity of the music for the bands it attempts to tie together.

If the debate is symphonic prog (which is what most people - especially non fans - are talking about when they say "prog") vs krautrock, I'll choose krautrock every time, regardless of whether we're talking about Can, Popol Vuh or Amon Duul. Apparently, that's because I'm "hip". ;)

Ok, Van der Graaf Generator is hard, middle class, and has TOO. Many. NOTES.

I'm chuckling at the idea that Florian Schneider-Esleben is less middle class than Jon Anderson.

Early Floyd and Hawkwind are fairly like Krautrock, though. "Interstellar Overdrive" has a lot in common with the first Tangerine Dream album, etc. Doesn't seem a stretch to say that Hawkwind is somewhat similar to Guru Guru/early Ash Ra Tempel (whereas it does with, say, Pink Fairies).

I'm assuming you're saying the Dead fit the "space music" category? But isn't that only because of "Dark Star?"

Maybe, generally speaking, Krautrock is like a bastion of modernism during the time of prog's retrogressive romanticism, a bastion of experimentalism during the time of prog's academic jazz-fusion formalism.

Anyway, symphonic rock had MILES better tunes than krautrock, and as such, it was MILES better.

I do see the music of Can, Neu, Faust, Kraftwerk, Cluster as being exceptionally in touch with modernist approaches. I'd even go so far to say Guru Guru, parts of ADII and Ash Ra Tempel were on this axis (at least when they wandered into free improv territory). But it's hard to classify them as being totally one thing or another - except to say they were playing "out there rock music".

Furthermore, there were modernist prog bands (Henry Cow, Magma, Soft Machine - the "hip" ones Joe mentioned - but also RIO in general, Van Der Graaf, Area (who somehow straddled straight ahead jazz fusion, electronics and free improv), the whole Trad Gras circle of bands, etc etc.

I don't see much/any "regressive romanticism" in progressive rock, nor much any "academic jazz-fusion formalism" Actually the nearest to "jazz fusion" I hear out of progressive music = Canterbury scene bands, many of whom had great tunes.

however, I agree about "retrogressive, and think that term is mostly a subjective thing

"Irmin is the organist and articulate spokesman...His English inclines to phrases like 'paramters of consciousness'. With him, there is none of Keith Emerson's front parlour arpeggios, or Richard Wright's Vaughan Williams chords, or Brian Auger's Sandy McPherson touch. Irmin studied under Stockhausen and Berio and it shows."

http://mcsweeneys.net/2005/6/30GladstoneRobillard.html

but grow one spine.

And my point is that judging one music or the other based on formalism concerns is tricky, because having (or not) an overarching form is not in and of itself an attribute that identifies something as modernist or not, prog or not. Furthermore, I would add that any band who uses a "motorik" beat is imposing a form on their music, even if the form is A > A > A > A > A... and yes, Irmin Schmidt studied with Berio and Stockhausen, two of the most formally advanced composers of the 20th century.

I'd also disagree about Yes being a mediocre psych band. Some of that early Yes stuff (as well as The Syn and Tomorrow) is pretty good psych, and I'm often more interested in that than the music they'd eventually become famous for.

I don't think I'll take on the "retrog" tag, because I don't much care to see what for me is some of the most inventive & enjoyable music of the '70's run down even more than it has been already, thx.

I don't think psychedelic music was very modernist either, at least not the English variant!

(x-post I fail to see the point of such provocation from mr anon sniper, but yes were loads more than a "mediocre psych band" right from the very start)

You can say "big fucking deal who they studied under/it's a red herring" if you must, but it's NOT totally irrelevant. Can were much more radical modernism than any of the prog bands mentioned on this thread.

Dom, I think the term "formalism" is being used in this instance to refer to music that is much more preoccupied with form. Generally, speaking Krautrock seems much less formalist than prog.

I'm not running down prog in general. I like a lot of prog. I like some of the music by the Yes. The "retrog" thing was a joke haha.

Re. psych as modernism: Been working on this hopeful book project on psych as manifestation of surrealist aesthetics for the last three years, so that's where I'm coming from with that.

http://www.krautnyc.com/PICS/1981X640.JPG

And funnily enough, those first 5 bands sited are easily the best in the Krautrock "genre" (apart from Popol Vuh of course!)

Oh, come now. If you want to play that card, do you also want to claim that "Watussi" or "Sehr Komisch" or "Fly and Collision of Comas Sola" or "Satz Ebene" (first track off Klaus Schulze's Irrlicht where literally the first ten minutes are one note...not one chord, ONE NOTE)!!) are somehow more 'tuneful' than "Dusk" or "The Knife"?

"Tunefulness" to me implies something that is fairly digestible/accessible and with a conventional form...Trespass is plenty tuneful to me. Again, it seems to me the use of "tuneful" in this instance really comes down to "music I like" and "tuneless" = "music I don't".

So, in general, the bottom line is that you like the bands/music/aesthetic associated with the 'Krautrock' label more than the ones associated with the 'Prog' label. Why not just leave it like that? There's no need to search beyond that for some great underlying, academic principle that ties all the bands crammed together under the Krautrock label or to rationalize with vague or not consistently applied criteria why these are 'better' bands. Even if you were to find such a consistently applicable principle (e.g., whether the music sounds too romantic vs. modernist, 'looks back' vs. is 'cutting edge', whether the artist listened to Beethoven growing up versus studied under Stockhausen, etc.), there are just as many people who quite validly wouldn't place much stock in that as a value/ideal, holding it as peripheral if not wholly irrelevant for the music that they like.

This is exactly the trap that many prog fans fall into: "Look at how FAST Rick Wakeman can play those arpeggios!" "Look at the way Zappa snuck in that augmented 7th chord on bar 49!!" "Look at Peter Gabriel's lyrics about a Puerto Rican punk morphing into a slipperman!! It's so...deep! He says it's based on Siddharta, but I think just may be an allegory for Watergate..." Not everyone places much weight in these things.

these things being virtuosity, compositional complexity, lyrical surreality, etc.

I like "Bel Air" quite a lot. It's groovy!

By the way, Can is another Krautrock band that I would not describe as "spacey". Future Days is an exception, where most of the material has a light and airy quality to it, but even here the 'spaciness' is a different thing entirely than Alpha Centauri, etc.), because there is more form (vs. what sounds like full improv) to the tracks. If anything, though, I'd overall be more apt to describe Can as "earthy" or "sensual" in their sound, due to the rhythmic/percussive emphasis.

All space music isn't outer space music. It might be Inner Space music, like Can! Some Neu and early Kraftwerk seems to be earthy pastoral naturalist space music. Can definitely have their space element, though.

My thing about Trespass was kind of a joke aimed at Geir. Next time I listen to it (and I have some fondness for it), I'll see what I think about how incorrect my offhanded joke was.

Not that I really know the stuff, but I don't think Scorpions or UFO are generally considered to be "Krautrock," right?

All I'm saying, really, is that "Krautrock" is not just a regional term. There are a lot of commonalities between these bands. Another one I thought of that sets Krautrock apart from prog is that Krautrock is sometimes FEROCIOUS. Early Can, 1st Tangerine Dream, 1st Ash Ra Tempel - there's a lot of ferociousness there. I can't think of much ferociousness in prog. Even like Magma or Area - they were never ferocious, really. Fast prog playing /= ferociousness. Was Robert Fripp ever ferocious? I guess Keith Emerson was once in a while, but there's a difference between Franz-Liszt-as-ferociousness and kicking-ass-all-the-way-to-the-moon ferociousness.

(And I'm not saying Krautrock is always ferocious. I know Harmonia is not ferocious. I've written the word "ferocious" a lot here.)

I haven't heard any early Scorpions and I don't know how much of their stuff fits within the period in question, But early UFO does sound like krautrock to me. Regarding ferociousness, you wouldn't say that any of the british bands mentioned on this thread were ferocious? The point is, why take a broad regional grouping of bands from Germany and compare them to a narrow subset of British bands?

Comus I guess predates Current 93 and stuff. Don't know how it relates to krautrock aesthetics much and don't remember ferocious krautrock style playing a la some early Can, early T. Dream, early Ash Ra, etc. on it.

But...what's so bad about something being ferocious 'in a calculated way' (vs. a 'pagan freakout' way)? See, this all comes back to tastes and validation...

There's nothing wrong if, for you, 'pagan freakout' ferociousness > calculated ferociousness; just realize not everyone holds the same ideal. I'll generally take calculated and/or carefully built ferociousness (some personal favorites: Crimson's "Starless" or "21st Century Schizoid Man", Yes' "Gates", Area's "Arbeit Macht Frei", Gong's "Sprinkle of Clouds", Magma's "Kohntarkosz" or "KA", just about anything by the Mahavishnu Orchestra) over pagan freakout a good 9 times out of 10.

If you want a neat (if admittedly very atypical) example of a symphonic prog excursion into 'pagan freakout ferociousness', get your hands on a copy of Yes' Yesshows and crank it up at full volume to the middle section of "Ritual" (with all the multiple percussion and growling/screaming triggers).

That said, if we're talking les Rallizes Denudes or "Sister Ray" or Gottsching/Enke/Schulze, then yes, I'd take the pagan freakouts over King Crimson nine times out ten.

Walter, your sarcasm annoys.

Who gives a shit anyway? The Germans and the Brits can both rock, albiet in different ways. Bands and artists are generally more interesting than movements and scenes anyway.

It's one of my least favourite Can tracks but I'm not a prog fan.

By the way, Can is another Krautrock band that I would not describe as "spacey".

True to some extent, but I've never heard anything by anyone that's spacier than "Quantum Physics" - it sounds like galaxies exploding or imploding or somesuch

xpost--Dadaismus, a lot of Hawkwind (especially Space Ritual) is spacier than "Quantum Physics." Boredoms (VCN), Yes ("Close to the Edge," "Gates of Delirium," "Starship Trooper", etc.), and Rush ("Hemispheres," "Entre Nous," and "Natural Science"), too.

I can't decide.

Again, Walter OTM. I don't think that any rational being would claim that there's NO aesthetic commonalities whatsoever, it's that the appeal to those commonalities tends to 'sweep under the rug' acknowledgement of the considerable and comparably undeniable variability that is also to be found under this label, both BETWEEN these groups and often even WITHIN the groups' respective discographies.

Put another way, sure, there are Krautrock albums that are very much tied together in an aesthetical point of view (this unity seems to be most pronounced towards the earlier periods when these bands were starting out circa 1969-1971).

BUT...there's ALSO substantial stylistic divergence within this umbrella label that renders its utility as a "real musical entity" limited and one can't help but wonder why it's all that important to adopt a 'reify at all costs' perspective. For ultimately, how meaningful can a descriptive music label like "Krautrock" really be, when also thrown under its umbrella are albums at such oblique angels from one another as Timewind, Psychedelic Underground, and Einsjager und Siebensjager? For me, from a strictly musical/aesthetical point of view, these albums simply don't have much if anything to do with one another, and when people clamor to tie them together...again, musically, not from the standpoint that they were all more generally the product of 70s countercultural Germany, which is self-apparent to anyone...in order to somehow 'uphold' the validity of Krautrock as a musical construct, this strikes me as a post hoc attempt that invariably resorts to the use of subjective or vague descriptors that are fleetingly applied.

outer space music connotations, wildness and/or aesthetic extremes of one form or another, etc.

Another one I thought of that sets Krautrock apart from prog is that Krautrock is sometimes FEROCIOUS.

Uh, I was not saying that those terms ONLY described krautrock bands and no other bands ever anywhere. And I mentioned before that it was a "space music" thing that didn't necessarily mean outer space. All four of those krautrock bands made a sort of space music (actually, I don't know la Dusseldorf very well, but Neu sure as hell did).

how about: taking sides: Kraut rock covers vs. prog rock covers: The Simple Machines doing Harmonia's "Immer Weider" versus Ruinzhatova doing Yes's "Close to the Edge," for example. Ruinzhatova is more comfortable and playful with much more complex music.

Of course not. I'm just pointing out that these terms are vague and subjective enough that they allow an awfully broad range of music under their umbrella. Not that that's a bad thing. It just means that to me, krautrock is more of a broad movement (similar to say post-punk) rather than a useful stylistic description and an argument pitting krautrock vs. prog rock seems about as futile as discussing disco vs. dance music.

according to the consensus here there is much "prog" in "kraut" rock (and perhaps vice versa?). it's interesting to continue distinguishing them, but not as much when you don't acknowledge the opinion of so many others that they have more in common than they don't, at the very least to the extent of not presuming it's self-evident they're qualitatively different (one is "better," more "wild," more "ferocious"--i'd say the who's "won't get fooled again" is "prog," and more ferocious than most other songs, "amboss" included, but then who cares, when i don't cite lyrics, pioneering uses of synthesizers for the sole purpose of simulating hypnosis (the political end-of-the-decade lethargy the song evokes), throwaway riffs repeated for only a few measures, before being discarded, that other bands would be proud to base entire songs around). i don't mean to sound like such an inquisitor. what you've been writing here is really interesting to me. i'm just throwing in my $0.02)

What consensus? Some have agreed w/ what I've been saying. No one has made much of a case, from what I can tell, as to what the prog elements are in krautrock and how these are more significant to the overall aesthetic of krautrock than the non-prog elements. Same goes for krautrock elements in prog.

"you don't acknowledge the opinion of so many others that they have more in common than they don't"

Like ANYONE who discusses things on this forum, I will gladly acknowledge anything I think is right. (And I never said that there were no prog elements in krautrock or vice versa or what have you.)

"at the very least to the extent of not presuming it's self-evident they're qualitatively different"

I see. Anytime that I state an opinion, I am presuming that my points are self-evident. Anytime anyone states an opinion that you agree with, they do not do this?

"one is "better," more "wild," more "ferocious""

I never said that krautrock was better. In my first post, I chose krautrock as the winner over prog rock, which was the original point of this thread. As for the wildness/ferocious thing, are early Can, early T. Dream, early Ash Ra Tempel - on the whole - more ferocious than Yes, King Crimson, and Genesis? Yes, I certainly believe that they are.

"all of those descriptive terms you've used describe artists like Sun Ra, Funkadelic or Hawkwind perfectly and bands like Neu, Cluster, Kraftwerk, La Dusseldorf, not at all."

i don't agree that Neu, Cluster, Kraftwerk, and La Dusseldorf are more ferocious than Sun Ra, Funkadelic, and Hawkwind, all seven of whom I'd consider "prog" musicians. i wonder why the persistent focus on distinction, beyond the initial generic, germinal "versus" thread prompt

I originally used the term "wildness" to refer to the aesthetics of krautrock, too. I've already stated that I see it - generally speaking - as being more radical modernism than most prog.

Now that's a bit of a stretch. I certainly didn't intend to imply that Sun Ra or Funkadelic were prog.

xhol caravan. can. amon duul ii. tangerine dream. a spectrum of their progression from jazz-psych of sm i through the side-long suites on sm iii

(ha walter we're on the same wavelength)

Do Can and Amon Duul II and Tangerine Dream really have a lot in common with the Soft Machine?

and also about the influence. the wild freeform mutlimedia improvs at the ufo club--sound tracked by floyd, soft machine, and tomorrow--had more influence on developing experimental music everywhere than cope's monks did on german progressive music

xpost--yeah, xhol caravan's got this languid doorsy kind of jazz going on that can be less than exciting sometimes

tim, "larks' tongue part i" might satisfy your taste for modernistic aesthetic extremism. also on that same album, "the talking drum" is indistinguishable from any of the songs can released around the same time (future days-soon over babaluma), except for the violin screach leading into "larks' tongue part ii" ( a song too concerned with agglomerating rythmic dynamics to pass for any of the more austere german prog). the title song to "starless and bible black" isn't remotely fierce, but more along the meandering lines of "quantum physics" or "interstellar overdrive." "The Mincer" could pass for "kraut" rock, if the vocals had a german, not british accent. "the great deceiver" is probably the most ferocious song on sbb, but it's not as unhinged as ash ra tempel at their most improvisational. maybe try randy holden's population ii for rock that makes ash ra sound calm?

Also U.K.-based Hapshash and the Coloured Coat. Featuring the Human Host and the Heavy Metal Kids (great album, BTW) seems to me a clear harbinger of Amon Duul 1 lunacy.

"Interstellar Overdrive" seems a bit of a krautrock precursor and may have been influential.

Feeling compelled to cart out once again for consideration the entertainingly petulant Klaus Schulze from his Perfect Sound Forever interview:

"PSF: It's been suggested that John Cage, Terry Riley and Karlheinz Stockhausen influenced your work. Is this fair?

KS: "Fair"? It's neither fair nor unfair. Better words would be: nonsense, absurd, false. Every time a journalist cannot cope (pun intended) with a certain music, he mentions "Stockhausen" as a kind of synonym. Have you ever checked Stockhausen's output? About five compositions could be called "electronic," and they were done about thirty to forty years ago, made with an oscillator or something like this. He did over hundred of other compositions that have no relation whatsoever to electronic music. And what I've heard sounds awful to my ears and to most other people's ears.

Stockhausen is maybe a good theorist, but, who's listening voluntarily to his actual music, and who "enjoys" it?

I also had – and have – nothing to do with Cage nor Riley, not their music nor their theories and philosophies (if they have any). This is simply not my world. When I started to do my music, and before, I was listening to Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd, to the Spotnicks and Ventures before that, but not to the names you mention. Nobody in my surrounding and in my age did. This was a kind of "culture" that just did not exist among us.

Only many years after – and because every third journalist asked me about "Stockhausen" – I finally bought his theoretic books and I read them. Interesting stuff, I must admit, but the results are not my cup of tea."

(That all being said, I do find his "but who enjoys it?" comment rather bold for somebody who released The Dresden Performance)

There, we must be up to 3 1/2 stars at least

AS CLEVELAND PUNK BAND: 3 1/2 STARS.

AS NEBULOUSLY-DEFINED SPIRITUAL WICCAN IDIOT-FEST: 0 STARS.

MY YEARS ON THE BENCH TELL ME YOU HAVE NEEN REFERRING TO THE LAST OF THE THREE. IF YOU HAVE A DEFENSE, THE BENCH IS WILLING TO HEAR YOUR PLEA.

WHY DO TEH CATHOLIC ITALIANS NEVER WANT TO MAKE PAGAN FREAKOUTS?

*pagans

YOU HAVE NO SAY IN MY JUDGMENTS BECAUSE IN THIS FORUM JUDGES ARE NEITHER ELECTED NOR APPOINTED, BUT BESTOWED.

You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/c/can/future-days-soon-over-babaluma-unlimited-edition-landed.shtml

and for balance, by cosmic coincidence, this ran today too

http://dustedmagazine.com/reviews/2268