Krautrock Also-Rans: A Poll

Talking of which, and Also-Rans, there's always Between/Peter Michael Hamel.

I like what Hamel I've heard a lot - cool trance-inducing stuff. But very hard to find. Someone needs to be cool and reissue it.

Anyone know much about Deuter? At what stage do his albums go bad? Maybe they're all good?

"D" is pretty cool and definitely Krautrock, he gets more and more new age as time goes on. But if you don't mind that he's pretty good through the seventies. Even the 1981 release, Silence Is The Answer, is pretty cool. But it's not super plastic, clean 80s-style new age stuff, just peaceful jams from a Bhagwan-lovin' beard farmer.

i only have Ecstasy from 1979 and in my head it nestles in amongst the Ashra stuff from the same period

I don't know why I keep Embryo albums. On paper, I should like them as much as the other krautrock stuff I love, but the only albums of theirs I ever liked were the ones that are now impossible to find: the jazzier ones with Charlie Mariano. I always return to the others hoping they will click but they never do. Opal is supposed to be the classic, right? Every time I try to listen to it, within ten minutes I forget that it's playing.

"Opal" is the most "rock" one, I suppose. Wouldn't call it a classic, personally.

Yeah, that sounds right. The others I've heard touch on that sort of "ethno-world-fusion" stuff I also can't really deal with in these contexts. I wish someone would reissue the ones with Charlie Mariano, because, as I said, I remember enjoying those. I wonder how the No Neck Blues Band collaboration sounds.

Night Sun not really Krautrock, but a fucking great heavy rock album. I'm not super big into that genre as a whole but damn if Conny Plank's production doesn't elevate it to a whole nother level.

I bought the first two Agitation Free albums last year and they deserved to win this poll, great stuff.

I never noticed Grobschnitt on that list! I might have voted for them - a lot of filler/blandola in their catalog, but "Solar Music Live" at least is excellent & ludicrously overblown.

Too scared to listen to their other stuff but "Solar Music Live" is indeed pretty cool, very very very Floydian. Eroc is a great drummer too... and his first solo album is pretty good into the bargain.

I don't love the first two Agitation Free records, but I agree that they belong (somewhere towards the bottom) on the "real Krautrock" list rather than at the top of the also-rans. They're sort of a hybrid of a lot of the jam-oriented German bands without a particularly strong identity.

Otherwise I've only heard Eloy from this list, and they're pretty ridiculous symphonic prog.

That Dom album is pretty good.