The Thousands

Cultural spelunkers know connecting the dots is half the fun. The originators and unique evolutionary off-shoots of any art form can be as much fun – if not more – than today’s latest and greatest.

Krautrock was born in 1970s Germany, when a bunch of long-haired counter-culture freaks started jamming long songs with few changes, incorporating repetitive, trance-inducing bass lines, drone, feedback, noise, synthesizers, studio experimentation, and monotone, or screamed vocals. Righteous.

Beautifully designed coffee table tome Krautrock: Cosmic Rock and its Legacy commemorates the bigwigs alongside obscure bands, with heaps of album art, fantastic photos, essays, and a sense of grandeur befitting underground legends like Can, Neu!  Guru Guru, Cluster and Kraftwerk.

Apre-cursor to punk and industrial, you can still hear echoes of Krautrock in post-rock bands Stereolab and Tortoise, and a slew of Kraut revivalists like Wooden Shjips, Tussle, and Cave. This book makes reading about Krautrock almost as fun as listening to it.