Krautrock

Can - The Lost Tapes

An essential Can album with unheard versions of familiar tracks and some never-heard-before material

Not lost at all, but just forgotten about in Can’s cluttered studio until archived by the classic German psych-rock explorers’ Irmin Schmidt recently, this three-disc dump of material is unfeasibly good considering it managed to avoid the light of day…

Remember Remember - The Quickening

A shimmering and optimistic tour de force from Scottish composer and pop genius

(Rock Action) Once upon a time there was a super electro-prog combo called Multiplies. They came from Glasgow, made like rock miscreants and then they were gone, leaving memories of marvellous live shows and the sense they were always too good to be…

Clubbers' Decktionary: Krautrock

An introduction to Krautrock

Proper noun: eclectic style, originally German, mostly instrumental and usually combining a traditional rock band line-up (guitars, bass, drums) with electronic instruments; often characterised by a four-four time signature and stripped-back productions…

Manuel Göttsching of Ash Ra Tempel lines up Glasgow date

Influential German electronic composer plays first gig in Scotland

This is a coup and then some for the team behind Glasgow’s Men & Machines club night. Not only has Manuel Göttsching never played Scotland before, but he only plays about two or three gigs around the world every year. ‘I’m usually too busy with other…

Damo Suzuki's cancer recovery brought him back to music

Local musicians invite the ex-Can singer to their city for improvised sets

‘I was with Can for three years,’ says Damo Suzuki simply, ‘and after that, I had many experiences in my life. I don’t like to compare with that time. I was a hippy then, I just liked smoking big joints and making the music happy. But since 30, 40 years…

Faust - Faust Is Last

(Klangbad) This first, and possibly last, studio album in a decade by Germany’s agit-hippy Kosmische collective is not the same version of Faust currently on tour led by Jean-Herve Peron and Werner ‘Zappi’ Diermaier. This is third founder member Hans…

Glasgow trio Moon Unit play at Harsh 70s Reality

‘One of the worst questions someone can ask you while you’re DJing is “can you play something I know?”’ says John Petrie, promoter of Stereo’s new monthly night Harsh 70s Reality. ‘To me, that just defeats the purpose of this. I don’t want to play the…

Krautrock pioneers Faust embark on 2010 UK tour

The story of Faust begins in 1970, when six dropout musicians convened in an old schoolhouse in rural Wümme, near Hamburg, to embark on a freewheeling musical project. Along the way they had run-ins with the Baader-Meinhof terrorist gang, and brought…

Glasgow DIY Festival

The city shows off its talented underground arts scene

Without wishing to play down the significance of Franz Ferdinand’s commercial breakthrough, arguably the real story of Glasgow rock in the ’00s has been the rise of the DIY gig scene. Nuts & Seeds got the ball rolling by booking weird, noisy and fun…

The Phantom Band

The Phantom Band are a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped inside an enigma. OK, they’re not really, they’re just six guys living in Glasgow making music, but as their ephemeral name suggests there is something shadowy and unfathomable about both the…

Harmonia

KRAUTROCK ABC, Glasgow, Fri 11 Jul As long lost supergroups go, the reignition of Harmonia is the musical equivalent of discovering some buried mythical city. When Michael Rother, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius got together again in 2007…