Review in Electronic Sound 02/2021

by Mark Roland, 28 January 2021
Read the original source here

Sprechen Sie Kosmische?

Reeperbahn to Autobahn in impressive tome

“Krautrock didn’t fall from the sky,” declares Hamburg-born, US-based author Jan Reetze about his latest book, ‘Times & Sounds: Germany’s Journey From Jazz And Pop To Krautrock And Beyond’. As soon as you find out that former Kraftwerker Wolfgang Flür was in a band called The Beathovens in 1966, you know there’s a back story that needs telling. Reetze’s book places krautrock in the wider context of Germany’s post-war reconstruction and its popular music industry, taking you from the jazz of the 1950s, via Stockhausen and the electronic avantgarde, towards the 1960s beat boom, krautrock, Neue Deutsche Welle, and on into the 1990s. Spread across 536 pages and with a foreword by Hans-Joachim Roedelius, this is a deep dive and then some.