Krautrock

Krautrock runs 100-130 BPM around the 'motorik' beat — a steady four-on-the-floor kick with eighth-notes on the hi-hat that runs for minutes without varying. Instruments include Moog and ARP synthesizers, Mellotron, electric piano, electric guitar, electric bass, and drums. Tracks run 5-25 minutes built on repetition, gradual additive development, and improvisation rather than verse/chorus. Vocals are sparse, sometimes in German, sometimes in English, often spoken or chanted as another instrument in the mix. Production was advanced for its time — Conny Plank's engineering in particular built three-dimensional stereo spaces.

The scene was scattered across West Germany in 1968-75 — Cologne (Can, formed 1968), Düsseldorf (Neu!, Kraftwerk from 1970), Berlin (Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze), Munich (Amon Düül II), and Hamburg (Faust). 'Krautrock' was a British music-press joke playing on 'sauerkraut'; the German musicians initially disliked it but the word stuck. Kraftwerk's late-70s pivot to electronic pop ('Autobahn,' 1974; 'Trans-Europe Express,' 1977) made the lineage globally influential — without it neither hip-hop nor techno would sound the way they do. Brian Eno, David Bowie's Berlin period, Joy Division, Sonic Youth, and most subsequent electronic music inherit from this scene.

The motorik beat alters time perception — Neu!'s 'Hallogallo' (1972) is the textbook case. Listen for how Jaki Liebezeit (Can's drummer) keeps the pulse so steady that the other instruments seem to move around a stationary axis. Stereo panning is precise — synthesizers drift slowly across the field rather than sitting in a fixed position. German-language vocals are best heard as texture, not as text.

Can's 'Tago Mago' (1971) is the canonical introduction. From there, Neu!'s self-titled (1972) for the motorik strain, Kraftwerk's 'Autobahn' (1974) for the electronic pivot, and Tangerine Dream's 'Phaedra' (1974) for the synth-meditative end.

The title track of Kraftwerk's 'Autobahn' (1974) runs 22 minutes 38 seconds in its album form and was inspired by the experience of driving Germany's highway system. A heavily-edited 3-minute single version reached #25 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1975, an unlikely chart success that turned the band into an international name. Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit (1938-2017) described his philosophy as 'self-effacement' — a drummer who wanted to disappear into the pulse rather than dominate it.