The 9 best Krautrock tracks of all time
Krautrock
West German bands from around 1970 who declined to inherit the blues. In its place: a steady unaccented pulse, tape editing treated as composition, and synthesisers used for texture rather than for showmanship.
Autoplay · All 9 play here · plays through and starts again
Swipe the list left or right to move through the queue
/
Neu! / Hallogallo
Ten minutes of Klaus Dinger playing one beat perfectly. The motorik pulse is the single most exportable idea German rock produced, and every record that drives forward without swinging owes it something.
Can / Halleluhwah
Jaki Liebezeit holds one figure for eighteen minutes while the band come apart around him. The strongest evidence that repetition is not the opposite of drama but its cheapest fuel.
Kraftwerk / Trans-Europe Express
Afrika Bambaataa built Planet Rock on it, Detroit built a genre on it, and it remains a wistful song about trains. No other record on this site has been quite so productive for people who misheard it.
Tangerine Dream / Phaedra
A sequencer drifting out of tune with itself for seventeen minutes, which the band kept because it was better than the accurate take. Ambient's immediate ancestor, and considerably more sinister than its descendants.
Faust / It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl
A nursery rhyme played by a band who seem to be sabotaging the tape as it runs. Faust treated the studio as the only real instrument, decades before that became a normal thing to say.
Manuel Göttsching / E2-E4
One hour, one sequence, one guitarist improvising over it in a single take. Sueño Latino lifted it, Balearic DJs adopted it, and it accidentally became the bridge from kosmische to the dancefloor.
Amon Düül II / Archangels Thunderbird
The commune end of the scene: Renate Knaup howling over a band that can genuinely play. Included because krautrock was never only the tidy, metronomic half that got the better press.