acornerinspace: A small tribute to krautrock

Krautrock is a generic name for the experimental music scene that appeared in Germany in the late 1960s and gained popularity throughout the 1970s, especially in Britain. Krautrock is an eclectic and often very original mix of post-psychedelic jamming and moody progressive rock mixed with ideas from contemporary experimental classical music (especially composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, with whom, for example, Irmin Schmidt and Holger Czukay of Can had previously studied) and from the new experimental directions that emerged in jazz during the 1960s and 1970s (mainly the free jazz pieces by Ornette Coleman or Albert Ayler). Moving away from the patterns of song structure and melody of much rock music in America and Britain, some in the movement also drove the music to a more mechanical and electronic sound. The signature sound of krautrock mixed rock music and "rock band" instrumentation (guitar, bass, drums) with electronic instrumentation and textures, often with what would now be described as an ambient music sensibility. A common rhythm featured in the music was a steady 4/4 beat, often called "motorik" in the anglophone music press.

Motorik is a repeated 4/4 drumbeat with only occasional interruptions, perhaps best showcased on "Hallogallo". Dinger (neu!s drummer) claims never to have called the beat motorik himself, preferring either "lange gerade" ("long straight") or "endlose gerade" ("endless straight"). He later changed the beat's "name" to the "Apache beat" to coincide with his 1985 solo album Neondian.

This track, which originally took up a whole side of vinyl, lasts for 18 minutes and 28 seconds and is typical of Can's sound around 1971 in that it features a vast array of improvised guitars and keyboards, tape editing, and the rhythm section "pounding out a monster trance/funk beat". The drum beat for which the song is famous is repeated almost continuously by Jaki Liebezeit, with only minor variations, throughout the course of the 18-minute jam.