This month’s theme music is brought to you by Germany! And their wonderfully minimalist psychedelic contribution to the 70’s rock canon, the unfortunately named Krautrock! It was my dear friend, the film auteur and musical bon vivant, Tom Finn, who turned me onto this amazing music during the the Summer of 1988. Upon hearing Can and Faust, my initial reaction was that there was this ultra-secret hidden-from-the-masses era of acid-rock completely unknown to me or my crate-digging friends at the time. It was everything that I was into in the late 80’s: avant-garde, funk rock, electronic, strange droning freedom. Some albums only had two songs, others had twenty-five, while some floated in lysergic headiness, others pushed the envelope of musique concrète mixed with repetitive rhythmical grooves. It was still pretty fresh to most untrained ears in ’88, only to be the de rigueur indie-rock influence by ’94. But that’s how these things work, right?

It was a chore to narrow down a definitive playlist of Krautrock gems, especially since so many of my personal favorites are unavailable to stream, lost to the ravages of time, taste, and rerelease short-comings (see the incomparable Gila). But for your pleasure, linked below is 10 hours of mind-bending German jams, the antithesis of Schlager. Dig.