So now I'm cheating a little bit but this is such a bargain that it would be a shame not to. So Niagara was a Klaus Weiss thing who's made a few libraries too. Three albums: Niagara, SUB and Afire - this record collects the first two and there's a CD you can get of them all.
The first is the infamous breasts gatefold sleeve. Two tracks, Six musicians, All percussion. Sounds either great or terrible but ends up dithering between brilliant and tiresome. Not the kind of twenty minute track to hold your attention unawavered but something you can drop in and out of as time goes on. Both tracks are pretty similar but never really get boring, despite the limited range of the instrumentation.
The real doozy though is the second disc - where the tracks are shorter and they add in bass, synths and guitars. The first tracks sounds like it came straight from a library record, all funky drums and deep guitar riffs, but unlike a library track it goes on and on and on. The record continues on in this vein - really right funky music with the right kind of embellishments. At times it sounds a bit like the Big Beat or Mustafa Ozkent but with the Kraut foundations. Bones starts with a huge drum crescendo then breaks down into a frantic afro rock style breakdown. Overall it's a bit more funky than the kraut records on the list but I think it's a bit better for it.
The Afire record continues on in this vein - not quite as complete as the first two but still pretty funky. All of these records seem to stay at the expensive end of things and so it's nice that the double album listed above exists and enables you to get the first two relatively cheaply. The full set is on iTunes also.
So that was the year of revisiting krautrock. My first year in California will be spent listening to, what else, British Rap - I can't wait!
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