• 1969

Amon Düül II - Phallus Dei

I'm not a big fan of Amon Düül II as a krautrock band, because they tend to fall too much into the progressive rock genre and I prefer my krautrock minimalist and avant-garde instead of epic, which is an adjective that may describe their music (and progressive rock in general) quite well. At the same time, I can't ignore how great their first three albums sound if I just take for granted their prog rock vibe. This album (their first release) is my favorite, if only because it's a little bit simpler and more percussive - sometimes reminding me of their sister band, Amon Düül I, but with a lot more professionalism.

• 1970

Kraftwerk - Kraftwerk

Kraftwerk has a lot of underrated albums in my opinion (I really like Ralf und Florian, Electric Café and Tour de France Soundtracks) but this one takes the cake. It's one of their best albums overall, although I admit it's a lot different from their later stuff: it is less electronic (even if it already sounded HUGELY electronic in 1970), it has a somewhat rock structure in it (going as far as having Klaus Dinger - which would later be Neu!'s drummer - in one of the tracks) and it has a more experimental edge, although it is very pleasurable to the ears and even danceable at times (hello, "Ruckzuck").

• 1971

Can - Tago Mago

I admit I have my reservations about the second disc of this double album. You have to be on the right mindset to listen to tracks like "Aumgn" and "Peking O" (both of them making almost 50% of the album's total length). However, this also has my favorite Can track, "Halleluhwah", an 18 minute jam which I don't mind listening to over and over again. Jaki Liebezeit's drums are simply amazing in its mechanical rhythmic persistence. The other 4 tracks are also little masterpieces themselves. I simply have to overlook their difficult and foreboding avant-garde adventures.

• 1972

Can - Ege Bamyasi

"Halleluhwah" might be my favorite Can track but Ege Bamyasi is my favorite Can album. Even their only avant-garde foray ("Soup") is an easier track than their previous experiments (maybe because it has more percussion and it begins in a somewhat conventional fashion?). Anyway, this release is the high point of their career. Their trademark sound contains a strong, precise drumbeat backbone (Jaki Liebezeit is called a "half-machine" for a reason), a throbbing bass, a funky guitar, Damo Suzuki's psychotic vocals, and some delicate keyboards that make a nice contrast with all the pounding groove going on there. Holger Czukay is the bassist, leader and main sound editor - their compositions are assembled in the editing room from much longer jams, which is an amusing way of composing songs (later bands such as Talk Talk would be known for doing the exact same thing).

Neu! - Neu!

(Yes, I'm choosing a second album for this year. This won't be the last time I'll be doing this - some years will even have 3 albums!)

Neu!'s first release may be one of the most influential debuts ever made. Here we can listen to some of the foundations of various subgenres which would appear in later years such as punk rock, post-punk, industrial music, noise, post-rock... No wonder lots of acts in these genres cite Neu! as an influence. Just like Can, the main feature in Neu!'s sound is their rhythmic focus, which is most evident in the so-called motorik beat, favored by Klaus Dinger: a 4/4 pattern with an emphasis on the third beat. Two tracks in this album use this beat: "Hallogallo" and "Negativland". The album also has some interesting ambient tracks like the droning "Im Glück", the slow jam "Weissensee" and the final track, "Lieber Honig", which has one of the most despair-filled vocal performances I've ever heard in my life - Michael Rother might as well have been feeling the end of the freaking world while singing that song.

• 1973

Faust - Faust IV

The first track is simply called "Krautrock". How iconic is that? It's as amazing as it could be, too. We hear distorted guitars for about 7 minutes and then the drums kick in, playing a quasi-motorik beat. The predominant wall of sound in this track also reminds me a little bit of the shoegazing bands of the 90s. The thing is: the second track is NOTHING like the first one. It's called "The Sad Skinhead" and tracks like this make me fall into the temptation of considering Faust the "Frank Zappa of krautrock". Seriously, this one and "Picnic on a Frozen River" wouldn't feel out of place in a Mothers of Invention album. Faust sure likes its fair amount of sound collages, as evidenced in their previous album The Faust Tapes and some of the tracks here, and this is their main ingredient for the band to be put alongside into the krautrock genre.

Can - Future Days

It is the most ambient-sounding Can album, while it still retains those amazing drum patterns from before. The result is probably my second favorite album by them (especially because I really love the contrast between strong rhythms and ethereal soundscapes). It is also the last album with Damo Suzuki's peculiar vocals. An album in which the weakest point is a track as amazing as "Spray" makes an impressive feat, if I may say so. "Future Days" could be the soundtrack for the most chilled out moments in my life (e.g., me petting my cat on the couch in a hot summer with the fan on); "Moonshake" is a pop song as delicious as they've ever made - I really wish I could EAT that song; and "Bel Air", oh my... It takes me into another dimension. They really could write 20 minute tracks that make me want to listen to all over again as soon as they are finished ("Bel Air", "Halleluhwah" and "Yoo Doo Right" are the three main examples). Damn, if I think too much about this album, it starts to defy the holiness of Ege Bamyasi...

• 1974

Kraftwerk - Autobahn

I also have my reservations with the last two tracks, although they are still interesting, especially "Mitternacht" with its somber mood. "Kometenmelodie 1" achieves a greater ominous mood in its simplicity, however. "Morgenspaziergang" just feels forcedly light and dandy. I really wish "Tanzmusik" (from their previous album, Ralf und Florian) was part of this album instead. Anyway, "Kometenmelodie 2" is like a hidden gem in Kraftwerk's discography. I love this track. It shows so much the potential of synthesizers back in 1974 and the melody and rhythm are ridiculously catchy. But as you may know, the title track is the central piece here. In the Beach Boys-inspired chorus they begin singing about driving on the no speed limit autobahns of Germany and the song is just perfect for driving (I don't drive, although I'm a passenger and can confirm it is) - just as most of krautrock music, to be honest. The final section even uses the motorik beat, which is properly named after "motorway". This 20 minute track is really a wonder.

Cluster - Zuckerzeit

I can't resist but compare this album to Autobahn. Sometimes I feel like this sounds even more modern and ahead of its time than the Kraftwerk album from this same year. Not that that makes it superior or more influential than Autobahn, but it's a cool thing to notice and it makes it feel extremely underrated, in my opinion. Tracks like "Caramba", "Heiße Lippen" and "Caramel" sound quite a bit like something from the late 70s and early 80s. The whole album is a delight to listen, even the most discordant tracks ("Rote Riki", "James" and "Rotor"), if only for the timbres alone. Although, of course, the pop sensibilities are their true force: "Hollywood", "Fotschi Tong", "Rosa" and many others stick to your mind like mental bubblegum.

Tangerine Dream - Phaedra

If I ever make a list about "albums that sound like they've come from another planet", this surely will be in it. This could be the moment where some of the krautrock bands stopped being rock. Tangerine Dream started the Berlin School of electronic music, which was a subgenre of early electronic music driven by the arpeggios of sequencers - something that makes it sound futuristic even by today's standards - but also with an ambient edge and compositions that lasted whole sides of LPs. This was appealing to film producers and directors, some of which would later bring Tangerine Dream to compose scores for major films like Sorcerer, Thief and Risky Business. Anyway, in this album we have two sequencer-driven tracks and two purely ambient ones. The title track was a huge thing for me when I listened to it for the first time. It felt exquisite and grandiose with its pulsating synths. It still feels that way, of course. The story goes that the change of key in the 9 minute mark was completely accidental after the equipment got really hot and began to detune itself. This is the kind of anecdotal story that makes an album legendary, I suppose.

• 1975

Harmonia - Deluxe

Harmonia was a krautrock supergroup composed of Cluster and Michael Rother from Neu!. Also, Mani Neumeier from Guru Guru in this album and Brian Eno in the third album. The good thing is that this sounds EXACTLY like a mix of Cluster and Neu!, which is awesome! To be quite honest, I will go as far as to say that this album also has instances where it sounds like Kraftwerk and Can. The title track could easily be a Kraftwerk song with its catchy German vocals and repetitive lyrics, and tracks like "Walky-Talky" has tribal drums (courtesy of Neumeier) that sound like Can. But the album also has a Neu!-like motorik-driven hard rock/proto-punk number in "Monza" and Cluster-like delicate and rhythmic electronic stuff in "Gollum". The final track, "Kekse", foreshadows Cluster's next album. This album is on my list if only by the sheer fact that it merges all of those krautrock sounds together. It would be a nice place to start listening to a genre that has so many different sounding bands if it wasn't for the fact that this project is not as popular as the individual bands themselves.

Neu! - Neu! '75

This is the album of a band finally reaching its highest potential. I mean, I enjoy their first two albums A LOT but this album was where they advanced their sound to its logical conclusion, even if the duo were divided in their approaches (Klaus Dinger was a noisy rocker and Michael Rother was a sensitive sound designer), so each side of the album was led by one of them. They both agreed about the use of their trademark motorik beat, however, as you can listen to it in both sides of the LP: "Isi" makes use of it with a foreground of graceful melodies; "Hero", on the other hand, makes use of it with an aggressive tone and regurgitated vocals that actually inspired John Lydon from the Sex Pistols (its distorted wall of sound and title also inspired David Bowie's "Heroes"). The other tracks are quite as good, with "Leb Wohl" mimicking their own "Lieber Honig" from the first album and "After Eight" being another great proto-punk piece. "Seeland" has a melodic guitar riff as comfortable as my bed and "E-Musik" is a showcase for production techniques (courtesy of the great Conny Plank, one of the most influential music producers in history and the guy who's arguably the most responsible for the krautrock sound).

• 1976

Cluster - Sowiesoso

Every track in this album makes me have a strange feeling. It's a very emotionally tangible album but the emotions I feel are sometimes weird and unexplainable. One could say it has dreamy qualities. Maybe that's exactly the answer: it touches my unconscious mind, it summons feelings that I only have when I'm dreaming, not at all when I'm awake. To know what I'm talking about just listen to... well, ALL of the tracks, but especially "Zum Wohl", "Umleitung" and "Es War Einmal", which are the ones that evoke the most of those dreamy feelings I'm saying here. Tracks like "Sowiesoso", "In Ewigkeit", "Dem Wanderer" and "Halwa" are a little bit more grounded in real life emotions but not quite completely. It's very interesting to write about an album in emotional terms instead of technical, lyrical or compositional terms - I found it was just the perfect opportunity to do so with this particular record, but I've also got to say that, genre-wise, it's one of the best ambient albums ever made and it's understandable that Brian Eno fell in love with these guys so much so as to collaborate with them in the following years.

Klaus Schulze - Moondawn

Berlin School going really wild and flourished. Klaus Schulze was an early member of Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel, but he left both bands BEFORE all of them actually went into the same artistic direction, which is a weird thing to happen. After they've done some purely experimental krautrock music together, they separated and all of them recorded ambient/kosmische musik albums. Then the three of them started using sequencers, which kickstarted the so-called Berlin School of electronic music, and influenced a whole different section of electronic musicians including Vangelis, Jean-Michel Jarre, trance music, and - a bit shamedly - the whole New Age thing. This album has two long tracks: "Floating" makes full use of hypnotic sequencers with those magical moments where it changes keys; and "Mindphaser" starts all lush with its velvet synthesizers and then all of a sudden a drum kit comes in to give an organic feel to this electronic journey punctuated by keyboard solos. It's epic and it's excessive but it's nothing really complicated or virtuoso as in the most self-indulgent prog rock albums. His solos tend to repeat the same notes over and over again instead of going for virtuosity, something that only adds up to the hypnotic quality of his music.

Ashra - New Age of Earth

Another release by a musician of the Berlin School. Ashra is sort of a solo project by Manuel Göttsching, ex-leader of Ash Ra Tempel. This is an odd album in the subgenre, because it's reversed: the main sequencer-driven track is only 7 minutes long and the long 20 minute track is almost purely ambient and not as memorable, to be honest. That 7 minute track is called "Sunrain" and it's pure bliss. One of my favorites. I really wish it was longer, though... "Ocean of Tenderness" is the best ambient track on the album and it has some slide guitar solos, because Manuel is also an accomplished guitar player. "Deep Distance" has electronic percussion throughout its duration and it's a very warm listen too with its Berlin School sequencers in the background. "Nightdust" is the long track and I have my problems with it. It's not bad but it's not the masterpiece it thinks it is... The main reason this album is on this list is its short tracks. [edit: 4 years later I'm beginning to like "Nightdust" a lot more for what it is]

• 1977

Kraftwerk - Trans-Europe Express

(I know this isn't exactly a krautrock album but after mid-70s nothing really is. I'll just keep on going talking about releases by krautrock bands, even if they are making synthpop and other things from now on)

Oh well, what can I say? The album that consolidated synthpop. An ode to Europe. A lot have been said about how the title track was sampled by Afrika Bambaataa and influenced hip-hop or how it mentions David Bowie and Iggy Pop. A little bit less have been said about the industrial percussion in "Metal on Metal" or the lyrical decadence in "The Hall of Mirrors". Much less about the mechanical genius of "Showroom Dummies" or the harmonic heaven that is "Franz Schubert". And what about the musical (timbre/melody/harmony/rhythm) cohesion displayed throughout the whole album, something that, in the end, reinforces the cyclical nature of the release (the final track "Endless Endless" referencing the first track and implicitly stating that the very album and the concept of it - Europe - has no end). Yes, this is an incredible album.

• 1978

Kraftwerk - The Man-Machine

Even more melodic than the one that came before (not necessarily better because of it, of course, but that could very well be a source of debate). I used to listen to this album while playing keyboard and improvising over the longer tracks like "Metropolis" and "Neon Lights" - the mid-section from "Neon Lights" is just ideal for that. "The Model" is just a perfect pop song - the type that makes pop musicians get jealous. "The Robots" is the band's musical representation of themselves. It also marked the beginning of one of their trademarks: messing around with different languages (something they played further with in their next releases). Thematically, the album is about the relationship between human and technology, including big cities as part of technological advancement ("Metropolis", "Neon Lights"). They don't get philosophical or political about it; their lyrics are minimal and neutral. If anything, they seem to endorse what is obviously the good relationship they have themselves with the kind of technological music they make.

• 1979

Tangerine Dream - Force Majeure

An album that combines rock and electronic music in such a natural way that it makes this task seem easy. You know how Pink Floyd would incorporate electronic music in their albums (e.g., "On the Run" and the various synthesizers they used)? Here it seems like the opposite: an electronic band incorporating rock into their music, although here it's more balanced than the rock bands that came before. Their sound got more of a progressive flow with many suites instead of the long and repetitive sequencer minimalism from before. The result is as majestic as the title.

• 1980

Moebius & Plank - Rastakraut Pasta

Dieter Moebius was a member of Cluster and Harmonia. Conny Plank was the producer of zillions of krautrock bands, including Kraftwerk, Cluster, Ash Ra Tempel, Neu!, Guru Guru, La Düsseldorf, Can, and even other musicians like Scorpions and Brian Eno. In the 80s, he became a producer of New Wave bands such as Eurythmics, Ultravox and Killing Joke. Anyway, this album is exactly what you expect by the title: a combination of krautrock and reggae/dub music. Most of the tracks are really minimal in that they don't have much of anything more than a beat and a heavy contour of production on the guitar, bass, drums and other instruments. This is exactly what Jamaican dub is about, though, so it's really cool. Oh, and talking about bass: Holger Czukay (from Can) plays its trademark throbbing bass on three tracks: "Feedback 66", Missi Cacadou" and "Two Oldtimers".

• 1981

Kraftwerk - Computer World

The last classic Kraftwerk album, this album is, of course, all about computers. From the most basic elements of computer science ("Numbers") to the universal idea of a world filled with computers ("Computer World"); from small machines ("Pocket Calculator") to the slightly larger ones ("Home Computer"); from the amusing side of it ("It's More Fun to Compute") to the possible emotional applications of it ("Computer Love"). The critical consensus is that this album is on par with other synthpop bands at the time - not particularly better but also no less. Kraftwerk had already largely contributed to the genre at this point. I agree. All of the tracks are nothing short of amazing (except maybe for "Computer World 2", which is a pale reprise). "Pocket Calculator" is fun in the purest sense; "Numbers" has an often emulated beat (that eventually gave rise to the Brazilian funk carioca beat) and a very pleasurable dissonant melody; "Computer Love" has THAT electronic riff; and the last two tracks, making up a medley, end the album in a very high note (it reminds me of the medley "Trans-Europe Express"/"Metal on Metal" and it's just as good).

• 1982

(I don't really know any good krautrock album from this year.)

• 1983

Moebius-Plank-Neumeier - Zero Set

HOLY FUCK, THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST UNDERRATED ALBUMS EVER!

I don't know anything in 1983 that sounds like this! This is proto-techno at its very best. This time, Moebius & Plank gets the help of Guru Guru drummer Mani Neumeier and he played some pretty impressive tribal drumming in here. It goes amazingly well with all the staccato techno bleeps and blops. Special attention to the tracks "Pitch Control" and "Speed Display". They sound like something from the 90s (!). It's not really far from what Aphex Twin would do more than a decade later. In "Recall" they go all world music with a Sudanese singer (Deuka), while "Load" is a somewhat heavy industrial track. I feel the need of making this album get the acclaim it needs somehow...

• 1984

Manuel Göttsching - E2-E4

This is another proto-techno/house/trance record of the early 80s but this one actually has acclaim. Ash Ra Tempel's Manuel Göttsching (which was previously featured in this very list as Ashra) made his magnum opus much later than his other krautrock friends. This album has 9 tracks progressing continuously from one another in a trance-inducing flow. Despite their different titles, all tracks share the same basic rhythm and melody. Yes, the album is the epitome of electronic minimalism: it doesn't seem to change structurally. Well, kind of. He improvises over this everflowing music, first in the keyboards and then, halfway through the album, he comes in with some intricate guitar solos. I really love this record. It shows just how much krautrock evolved from its beginnings in the late 60s. This isn't even krautrock anymore, to be clear, though. However, I'm closing the list with this one. I thought it was necessary to include this gem, seeing that it is in fact a final result of German krautrock; its ultimate conclusion.