Krautrock, Japrock, Progrock, Postpunk ... a few recent finds

Being fortunate enough to visit London with work on a reasonably regular basis, most weeks I manage to find time to visit a record shop or two after work. Over the last few weeks in particular I have picked up a wide variety of CD's which do not fit neatly into a single musical category, other than the fact that I like them. Perhaps instead of trying to come up with a meaningful title for this post I should have justed called it "Me rock".

Probably my favourite out of the latest batch is John Cale - Paris 1919. I had heard the odd track on last.fm so was not buying blind, but this is a truly brilliant album. My only dilemna now is that having bought what seems to be widely regarded as his best solo work, anything else I buy may be a disappointment. I did notice that he's performing this at the Festival Hall next month but it seems like tickets sold out pretty quickly - I'm just hoping it's the sort of thing that might appear as a BBC4 documentary later in the year.

Other great finds have been a couple of CD's from Van Der Graaf Generator. I now have four in total having recently added H to He Who Am The Only One and Still Life to the collection. Whilst these are both great albums, I do find I need to be in the right sort of mood to listen to Peter Hammill's 'shoutier' material ... I could however listen to his ballards every day, regardless of mood.

Having now finished reading Julian Cope's excellent Japrocksampler book, I did try and track down some Japrock CD's but this did unfortunately not bear any fruit. I was however a bit more successful with Krautrocksampler and managed to find a copy of Harmonia - Deluxe. For anyone who doesn't know, Harmonia are Michael Rother (Neu), Hans Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius (Cluster). This is a perfect album in every respect and has been played daily since I found it.

And finally, for this blog entry anyway, a couple of CD's by John Foxx, on his Metamatic label: A New Kind of Man and Impossible, both featuring Louis Gordon. As I think I've mentioned before, John Foxx is one of those artists that I didn't give adequate attention to at the time. I particularly like Impossible which sounds simultaneously modern and retro. Looking through the Metamatic discrography on Discogs it seems that there are plenty more releases to track down. I also need to get hold of the 3 albums that he did with the pre-Midge Ure Ultravox!

As with all my CD's, I generally don't keep them in physical format, and now having upgraded to a massive 160Gb iPod even less so. Those that I'm selling on can be found on my web site.

Records and CDs for sale

Japrock vs. Krautrock

I first developed a taste for Krautrock from a friend who suggested a few bands I might like to check out, and also lent me his copy of Julian Cope's great book Krautrocksampler from a good few years ago now. I tracked down lots of Can material quite quickly, including some of the solo and collaborative efforts of its various members. I also managed to find copies of a couple of Neu, Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Cosmic Jokers, Faust and Ash Ra Tempel releases. Can, Faust and Neu were probably my favourite of that batch. I didn't discover the likes of Amon Düül, Harmonia and Popol Vuh until much later. Harmonia were a really great find and I was quite surprised to not have discovered them earlier through my following of Brian Eno.

I have made extensive use of lastfm.com over the past few months to discover more Krautrock but today something I was listening to or reading brought back a distant memory of a book I'd seen called Japrocksampler, again by Julian Cope. I remember looking a t it briefly in the shop at the time but then promptly forgot about it. So, it was with great interest this week that I have been exploring Japrock on lastfm.com. I'm definitely a novice in this area but have unearthed some interesting bands and songs already.

The Flower Travellin' Band were a bit of a surprise. Admitted I've only heard a couple of tracks so far but was surprised that they were a bit blues/rock oriented. I had some sort of impression that the genre would be really quite weird and experimental, so whilst this was not unpleasant, it was slightly unexpected.

My expectations however were soon set right when I heard some material by Magical Power Mako. The tracks which have come up so far are from the more recent albums, but are still challenging in their own way.

Probably the most bizarre discovery however was Les Rallizes Dénudes. Not only is their music interesting, but the band history is also somewhat out of the ordinary in that one of the band's members took part in a plane hijack with the Red Army Faction, and ended up taking asylum in North Korea. That is so much more rock'n'roll than throwing the TV set out of your hotel room window.

Having been impressed with what I've heard so far from this genre, Japrocksampler is definitely a book I'll be tracking down, and the Japrocksampler web site is a great resource too. As with some of my other less mainstream tastes such as Nurse With Wound, Throbbing Gristle, etc., it's not the sort of music that the rest of the family appreciate too much, so listening becomes somewhat more of a private pleasure.

I'll probably write more blog entries on this fascinating subject once I know more about it and have discovered which aspects I like more/less than others.

I don't own any Japrock records or CDs that I've grown out of and/or stored electronically yet, but I do have some Krautrock CDs and records for sale for anyone interested.

Krautrock and Kosmische

Once again I find myself in re-discovery mode. Today's musical re-discovery is Krautrock or Kosmische. I have a handful of albums by Can, Klaus Schulz, Neu!, Tangerine Dream, Faust, etc., but they generally get very little airtime. However since I discovered last.fm I have started to re-listen to these artists, and thanks to last.fm's ability to come up with similar artists I have now discovered a few bands of that genre who I'd never come across before. My current favourites are Harmonia who I have also discovered that Brian Eno proclaimed to be "the world’s most important rock group", and Cluster. Also getting regular plays have been Guru Guru, Neu!, Popol Vuh and Roedelius.

I must admit however, some of it is not completely to my likeing. Whilst I can normally appreciate a length piece of music that builds up into something spectatcular, I have heard a couple of tracks by the likes of Manuel Gottsching just go on for that bit too long and don't really go anywhere, but overall a pleasing genre and one which I'm hugely enjoying (re)discovering.