Music

‘When the Stereophonics start mentioning Krautrock, you know something’s happening,’ says Rene Renner, head of the Krautrock-obsessed Gronland label. It’s certainly a leap of logic to associate such a meat-and-potatoes outfit with one of rock’s most daring subcultures. But listen to their ‘Language. Sex. Violence. Other?’ from last year and the driving influence of Neu! is clear. And Kelly Jones isn’t the only one. Coldplay love Kraftwerk; Placebo and the Chili Peppers are huge fans of Neu! and Quentin Tarantino used the music for ‘Kill Bill’. Feature continues

Meanwhile, fashionably-trousered acts like LCD Soundsystem and Canada’s MSTRKRFT push the sound onto the dancefloor. Something really is happening.Krautrock is a nebulous term, lassoing together a flock of diverse German music from the early to mid-’70s: Neu!’s glacial, motorik grooves; Cluster’s ethereal space rock; Tangerine Dream’s pulsing soundscapes; avant-gardists Faust; Can’s baggy space-funk; Amon Düül’s crazed acid rock. But as Michael Rother, a pioneer of the ‘scene’ with Neu! and Harmonia, says: ‘You learn to live with it because everyone has agreed that it’s the expression for the music that came out of Germany in the ’70s.It’s okay as long as people are willing to see the differences, because we all tried very hard to be individual.’

Once deemed derogatory, it’s now the tag for a much-revered period of music – one that’s been sourced immer weider. Brian Eno learned his electronic chops from Cluster and passed his expertise on to David Bowie. Mark E Smith and John Lydon are huge fans. Suicide, Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire all carried the baton, making experimental, futuristic pop. And let’s not forget Kraftwerk’s impact on techno and electro. Krautrock swept through the late ’80s, influencing 4AD bands, shoegazers and Spiritu-alized’s ‘Lazer Guided Melodies’. But it was the 1995 publication of Julian Cope’s ‘Krautrocksampler’ (now out of print) that kick-started the recent reappraisal.

‘His book made a huge impact,’ says Renner. ‘For the first time all of the information was in one place – a decent history of what happened, who’s been inspired by it and what records to buy. At the time we barely knew the depth of it but we’ve caught up and it’s interesting to see how many young bands are being inspired.’

What followed were Moog-driven outfits like Stereolab, Broadcast, Add N To (X), Plaid and, more recently, a slew of reissues. The most important are Can’s early albums (notably ‘Tago Mago’ and ‘Ege Bamyasi’) and ‘Neu! 75’. Gronland asked Bowie and Eno to write liner notes for these (though they didn’t get round to it) and Radiohead got in touch to say how inspired they’d been. ‘It helped us find a way to today’s music fans,’ says Renner.