It first crept into Britain in the early Seventies, a little baffled at its reception. When Faust named a 1974 track Krautrock, they were throwing shade at how idiotic the Brits must be to have given a genre that reductive name.
“We thought they were just taking the piss”, they shrugged. Germans preferred the word “kosmische”. And yet the tackier name has stuck, even though the music ranged wildly from prog-adjacent space rock to electronic loops to mantra-like motorik momentum. Kraftwerk didn’t sound like Can; Neu! didn’t sound like Tangerine Dream. Roedelius didn’t sound like La Dusseldorf.
