do you love the color of the sky? (opens in new tab)
The Los Angeles band dials up the hazy distortion and synthetic sheen surrounding its spacey blend of shoegaze guitars and breakbeats.
Krautrock is the sound of a groove that refuses to stop. Its best-known trademark is the motorik beat, a steady, driving pulse that feels like a car on an empty road, but the scene also covered long, hypnotic jams, tape experiments, early synthesizers and cosmic ambient drift. What unites it is repetition used as a way to travel somewhere.
It came from West Germany in the late 1960s and 1970s, where young musicians set out to make music that owed little to American and British rock. Groups in Cologne, Düsseldorf, Berlin, Munich and out in the countryside built new sounds almost from scratch, often with producer Conny Plank at the desk. The name came from the British press, and plenty of the musicians disliked it.
Its influence is everywhere: David Bowie and Brian Eno's late 1970s work, post-punk, electronic dance music and indie bands to this day. Put one of these records on and your foot will be tapping before you notice.
Can: Cologne band whose drummer Jaki Liebezeit held endless, funky grooves while the others improvised; much of their music was edited from long jams.
Neu!: Duo of Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger, both early Kraftwerk members; Dinger's relentless drumming is the definitive motorik beat.
Kraftwerk: Düsseldorf group who began in the krautrock scene with flute-and-organ jams, then moved into the electronic pop that changed music.
Faust: Chaotic, collage-minded group splicing rock, noise, tape edits and jokes; their fourth album opens with a track called 'Krautrock'.
Amon Düül II: Munich band that grew out of a commune, playing heavy, sprawling psychedelic rock with violin and wild vocals.
Tangerine Dream: Edgar Froese's Berlin group, whose 1970s albums used sequencers and synthesizers to build long, pulsing cosmic journeys.
Ash Ra Tempel: Manuel Göttsching's Berlin group, stretching guitar into long, spacey psychedelic jams before his later electronic work.
Cluster: Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius, who went from harsh electronic noise to gentle, melodic miniatures that point toward ambient music.
Harmonia: Cluster plus Neu!'s Michael Rother, blending motorik pulse with warm, playful electronics; Brian Eno came to visit and record with them.
Stereolab: London band who fused motorik rhythms with sixties pop, analogue synths and Laetitia Sadier's cool vocals, carrying krautrock into nineties indie.
Beak>: Bristol trio co-founded by Portishead's Geoff Barrow, built on deep, hypnotic, live-in-the-room grooves.
Föllakzoid: Chilean band stretching the motorik pulse into long, trance-like pieces somewhere between psychedelic rock and techno.
Can, Ege Bamyasi (1972)
Their tightest, funkiest set of songs, and the easiest door into Can.
Opens with 'Hallogallo': ten minutes of the motorik beat in its purest form.
Kraftwerk, Autobahn (1974)
The title track is a 20-minute-plus drive where krautrock turns into electronic pop.
Their most approachable record, moving from drones to catchy songs to studio mischief.
Harmonia, Musik von Harmonia (1974)
Warm, bubbling electronics and gentle grooves: three experimenters clearly enjoying themselves.
Amon Düül II, Yeti (1970)
A sprawling double album of heavy psych rock and free-form jams.
Cluster, Zuckerzeit (1974)
Bouncy, melodic electronic miniatures with a direct line to synth-pop and ambient.
Stereolab, Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1996)
Motorik grooves meet sixties pop and jazzy chords: the perfect bridge for indie fans.




The Los Angeles band dials up the hazy distortion and synthetic sheen surrounding its spacey blend of shoegaze guitars and breakbeats.
Electronic in nature, Dummy’s ‘Do You Love The Color Of The Sky’ leaves the ears dripping once the album concludes.
No blueprint.
On their sixth release with Rocket Recordings, Gnoomes have crossed a threshold, literally.
The Mexico City based five-piece Diles Que No Me Maten conjure a languid and mournful psychedelia on their fourth album, Escrito en Agua , infusing krautrock and slowcore elements into a patiently…
Recorded during the same sessions as last year’s song-oriented Inland See, a new EP from the experimental trio returns to a cosmic, hypnotic drift.
On Isle Peaks , Bitchin Bajas continue their long-running musical exploration of the unknown, turning three outtakes from the Inland See sessions into an immersive journey through imagined landscapes.
It was 2:00 am when I had finally found my way to Nakano.