Classic Rock Crate Digger: Prog's Red-Headed Stepchild ... Krautrock

Can: Tago Mago
Probably the most (justifiably) celebrated Krautrock album of all time, Tago Mago represents the apex of Can's powers. Accentuating the "mental" in "experimental," our heroes bend space and time with ample help from innovative tape-loop manipulation, inverted bastardized grooves, astral guitar layers and Damo Suzuki at his peak — singing with a lazy haze of cohesive cool on parts of "Mushroom," and violently convulsing with lyrical outbursts of amazing incoherence on "Peking O." Calling this album "ahead of its time" is a well-meant injustice. — Eric Shea

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Popol Vuh: Das Hohelied Salomos
More than any other Krautrock band, Popol Vuh were obsessed with exploring the spiritual in modern experimental rock music. Like much of their catalog, Das Hohelied Salomos sounds like a religious invocation: majestic, sacred and exotic. By the time of the record's release in 1975, the group was clearly moving away from the electronic-based compositions of its earlier drone work. The stars here are the incredibly ethereal vocals of Djong Yun and Daniel Fichelscher's chiming electric-guitar work. Interestingly enough, Popol Vuh sound influenced by The Grateful Dead's mid-'70 fusion phase. — Justin Farrar

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Tangerine Dream: Electronic Meditation
There's no underestimating Tangerine Dream's influence on modern electronic music; they've touched everything from techno to underground noise to New Age. Early on, however, T.D. were first and foremost a psychedelic rock band, as spacey and magical as Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd or the Soft Machine. If you want to explore the outer reaches of sound, look no further than the group's debut album, Electronic Meditation. There are only five songs here, but every one is a droning masterpiece. — J.F.

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Embryo: Opal
Predating Embryo's move into funky ethnic-fusion by about three years, Opal exudes a kind of jazz-inflected psychedelic-rock feel. Through the years the band has been regularly compared to Can. The comparison makes sense when first encountering a track like "You Don't Know What's Happening," which sounds not far removed from the iconic Tago Mago. At the same time, Embryo bust way more skronk than their Krautrock peers. The group's grooves are also less fluid, more like stuttering pistons than purring motorik. To hear the band at their peak, go straight to "People from Out the Space." — J.F.

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Neu!: Neu! (Box Set)
Brian Eno once said, "There were three great beats in the 1970s: Fela Kuti's Afrobeat, James Brown's funk and Klaus Dinger's Neu! beat." Compiling the group's three official studio albums, plus remastered reissues of Neu! '86 and Neu! '72 Live in Dusseldorf, this five-disc box set is the word on that innovative beat. It's a crisp, propulsive brand of hypno-groove that wound up exerting an enormous influence on post-punk, techno, indie rock and beyond. Critics often tag it "futuristic," yet a more apt description would be "timeless." It's as elemental and pure as the pulse in your wrist. — J.F.

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Deuter: D
German composer Deuter is known primarily as one of the founders of ambient New Age music. Yet his earliest work, believe it or not, is brain-melting psychedelic awesomeness. His 1971 debut album, simply titled D, is a key release in the Krautrock/kosmische-music canon. The record is a thick, throbbing fusion of delirious space rock, tribal-like fogginess and electronic buzz. In all honesty, fans of Deuter's later work might not know what to make of the powerfully strange brew that is D. — J.F.

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Amon Düül II: Phallus Dei
Amon Düül II came together in the late '60s after the real-deal musicians in Amon Düül ditched their communal brethren. Growing tired of all the tribal shenanigans, they wanted to rock out like pros, and that's exactly what they did. Phallus Dei, the group's debut, is a landmark in early, psych-tinged progressive rock. The arrangements and compositions are imaginative and well crafted, while the ensemble interplay is aggressive, bordering on manic at times. For the first dozen spins or so you'll have trouble making it past the opening title track, a 20-minute epic that's a joy to explore. — J.F.

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Faust: So Far
On Faust's sophomore effort, released in 1972, the Krautrock icons pull back just a bit from the avant-garde extremes marking their debut. The result is a wonderfully eccentric rock album, incorporating touches of folk, prog, psych, electronic music and classical. Unlike Can and their love for laser-guided focus, Faust are obsessed with variety and change. That said, several songs — including "It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl," "I've Got My Car and My TV" and "Mamie Is Blue" — possess a bubblegum-bred playfulness. Faust just love to have fun — even when they're diving into the sonic abyss. — J.F.

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Harmonia & Eno '76 (aka Harmonia '76): Tracks and Traces (Reissue)
Back in the mid-'70s, Brian Eno was one of the first non-German musicians of note to realize Deutschland was producing some of the most vital pop and rock of the decade. In 1976 he teamed up with one of his favorite groups, Harmonia (itself a spin-off of two more personal faves: Neu! and Cluster), and recorded a handful of tracks. Though none were released officially until 1997, the short-lived collaboration exerted a huge influence on the myriad directions Eno's solo material would take well into the '80s. In other words, Tracks and Traces is one of the foundations of modern ambient-pop music. — J.F.

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Agitation Free: 2nd
Agitation Free don't possess the hipster cache of Can, Faust and Amon Duul II, yet they created some of Krautrock's best music. The band's relative obscurity can in part be attributed to their idiosyncratic evolution. Unlike their peers, many of which turned more alien-sounding with each release, Agitation Free did the exact opposite. Thus, 2nd is far more rooted in American improv-rock circa 1970 than its predecessor, the insanely exotic Malesch. Nevertheless, this record is awesome; in a perfect world it would be considered a jam-band essential, right up there with Live/Dead and Eat a Peach. — J.F.

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Ashra: New Age of Earth
Manuel Göttsching's transformation in the 1970s is amazing. In well under 10 years he went from pioneering blitzed-out space rock in the band Ash Ra Tempel to helping lay modern electronica's foundation with his Ashra project. Originally released in 1976, New Age of Earth isn't dissimilar from the synth-based kosmische musik of ex-Ash Ra mate Klaus Schulze, or even Spiral-era Vangelis. And yet it feels wonderfully prescient and out of time. Its crisp focus and airtight flow feel more in tune with the binary logic of the cyber-era than the deep-space ambient music popular at the time. — J.F.