The Musical Box

Righty-o, as promised earlier on: Music.

My discoveries of the last couple of months? Well, quite a couple actually. Nevertheless, I will be targeting for one little bit of your and my attention as my most important discoveries were in the world of Prog Rock.

Early Genesis? Love it! Van der Graaf Generator? Gets me going! Hawkwind? The best! Krautrock? Yeah baby!

Let us focus on the latest addition to my broad list of favourites first: Genesis. Their reputation is a bit wobbly to most, and to be honest with you I was not too sure what to expect either when I was to be introduced to their early work. Then I got to listen Live, which is – as you supposedly expected – a live album which was recorded while they were supporting their Foxtrot album and released while they were working on Selling England By The Pound. The album is lively, consists of nothing but the best of songs, it just has it all. Then when you dig deeper into their work, exploring other albums and you come across one gem after another. I’ve been listening to Trespass, Nursery Cryme, Foxtrot, Selling England by the Pound and The Lamb Dies Down on Broadway and have yet to encounter one dull moment. I presume I do not have to tell I was absolutely stunned by this.

How comes their reputation is not all too strong then? Well, most of us know Genesis only of their work when Phil Collins was in the lead, and I am quite sure that is their biggest problem. Quite soon it became obvious to me their first lead singer (and actually overall leader) Peter Gabriel was the main strength of the band. His on-stage appearance was amazing, mostly his performances were costumed and contributing to the atmosphere of the gig a great deal, and both his intelligent way of writing lyrics and great voice-range are highly impressive. Qualities Phil Collins seemed to lack

So tip of the day number one: Get Genesis Live!

And now for Krautrock. Krautrock is essentially hardly anything more than German Prog Rock but in fact, it goes quite some steps further. I can assure you one thing, without Krautrock our musical world, and especially the bit exploring electronic music would have looked very different indeed. Not only Kraftwerk – probably the most widely known Kraut band – went far, but others went even further. NEU!, for example, stripped music down to the very essentials, giving songs a simple but effective Motorik beat covered in delightful melodies. They even were pioneers of remixing, as they had spent all the money they got from the record company to record an album on new and exotic instruments so they could not pay for more time in the studio. Hence, they put the same songs played at different speeds on the record and the problem was solved. Simple but effective, I would say.

Other classic Kraut bands not to forget about are Faust, if their music had not been much the artwork on their first album Faust would have made history anyway. But then again there are pure bits of genius on their albums like the song Krautrock that you just cannot deny. Another one is Can, especially their Damo Suziki era was groundbreaking, albums like Ege Bamyasi, Future Days and Soon over Babaluma are not to overlook in any way. (though the last one was without Suzuki already)

Two others wrote true history though. The absolute pioneers of pure electronic music emerged from the same nest, Tangerine Dream and their ex-drummer Klaus Schulze. Performing in a tradition somehow closer to classical music than pop, shaping rather trippy, hermetic soundscapes their music is far from easy and probably not meant for everyone’s ears. With nothing at hand but a stack of Moogs, Minimoogs and loads of other synthesisers, for example, Schulze made a double-LP consisting of truly impressive musical biographies called X (as it was his tenth album), very much unforgettable to me. Both he and Tangerine Dream mainly improvised but got to make sounds that sound fresh and modern up ‘til this very day. Albums you should be getting are Ricochet, Phaedra and Rubycon by Tangerine Dream and Moondawn and X by Klaus Schulze. If you love your music as much as I do you will not regret!