My own extensive interview with Vander<\/a> ranks among my most treasured interactions as music journalist.)<\/p>\nThe third volume concerns itself with the jazz-inflected, often whimsical Canterbury variant of progressive rock. I haven\u2019t seen it, but very much look forward to doing so: it focuses on Caravan, one of my all-time favorite groups, as well as a host of other names that rank among the most well-known in the genre (Soft Machine, Gong, Egg, Matching Mole, Hatfield and the North, National Health, Quiet Sun etc.). Even if you don\u2019t recognize those names, trust that they\u2019re all important players in the nexus where exploratory jazz and a skewed pop sensibility intersect.<\/p>\n
Which, finally, brings us back to Romantic Warriors IV<\/em> and the krautrock scene. There\u2019s so much to cover there that this volume focuses upon Dusseldorf, Cologne and Hamburg acts. On-screen appearances by the major players in Can, Harmonia, Kraftwerk, Neu! and others. There\u2019s no narration; instead, the words of the participants \u2013 combined with music from the glory days as well as current footage \u2013 tells the story.<\/p>\nFor those with some (but not extensive) interest and immersion into krautrock, the film offers quite a few surprises. Placed into the proper context, a lot of the music chronicled seems more accessible than it might otherwise. The insistent motorik<\/i> of Neu! is hypnotic, and the often wordless vocalizing of Can\u2019s Damo Suzuki somehow starts to make a kind of sense. Time spent with Romantic Warriors IV<\/i> will almost certainly lead the viewer to seek out more of this music. (If you haven\u2019t yet heard them, I\u2019d suggest Can\u2019s Future Days<\/i> and the entirety of Kraftwerk\u2019s Autobahn<\/i> as ready entry points.)<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll admit that I was looking forward to learning more about Amon D\u00fc\u00fcl II, but they\u2019ll be covered in an upcoming volume. And because the subject is so expansive, even a documentary series like this isn\u2019t likely to hit all the points: nowhere in the production company\u2019s literature do I see any mention of plans to cover Grobschnitt, my all-time favorite German group. But that\u2019s no indictment of this excellent series; the filmmakers do a fine job as it is.<\/p>\n
I do have one very minor critique of Romantic Warriors IV<\/i>, however. As is sadly too typical, I\u2019m an American who speaks only English (small bits of Spanish and Portuguese notwithstanding). That means that I\u2019m often set adrift while screening the documentary; several long passages \u2013 in particular those covering the fascinating Floh de Cologne \u2013 are completely in German. \u201cOh,\u201d I can hear you saying, \u201cYou could turn on the closed-captioning?\u201d Well, yes. But since plenty of the film features English speakers, the onscreen captions get in the way. Were there a way to have captioning display only<\/i> when the speakers aren\u2019t using English, watching the film would be a smoother experience.<\/p>\n
But the skill in which the film is put together \u2013 coupled with the compelling subject matter \u2013 makes any minor inconvenience such as that unimportant. Krautrock: Romantic Warriors IV<\/i> occupies a special place in the world of music documentaries. It shines a light on fascinating, deeply creative (and even life-affirming) music that most listeners know little of. It\u2019s important work, and I for one enthusiastically await the next volume in the ongoing series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The term krautrock may just be one of those labels that is meaningful only to those who exist inside a kind of bubble. The person on the street, so to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18939,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,43,56,65],"tags":[4222,3135,4223,4224,4225,4221],"class_list":["post-18938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dvd","category-krautrock","category-prog","category-review","tag-can","tag-faust","tag-kraftwerk","tag-krautwerk","tag-neu","tag-romantic-warriors","cat-25-id","cat-43-id","cat-56-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18938"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19023,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18938\/revisions\/19023"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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The term krautrock<\/i> may just be one of those labels that is meaningful only to those who exist inside a kind of bubble. The person on the street, so to speak, is unlikely to have ever heard the term, much less to know what it represents. Very loosely defined, krautrock is the rock music that came out of Germany in the very late 1960s and \u201870s that possessed a uniquely German character. It\u2019s not Scorpions and it\u2019s not Rammstein. It is, however, Can, Faust, Neu! and Kraftwerk. True, those bands often don\u2019t sound at all like each other, but their groundbreaking approaches to music earn them the label nonetheless.<\/p>\n