Why Did Krautrock Basically Invent Everything?

Genuine question because the more I dig into it the more absurd it gets.

Between roughly 1968 and 1979, a handful of German bands operating largely outside the Anglo-American music industry invented or directly prefigured: electronic music (Kraftwerk), ambient music (early Cluster, Eno collaborations), post-rock (Can), motorik/hypnotic groove-based music (Neu!, Harmonia), kosmische / space music (Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze), and industrial music (Einstürzende Neubauten, slightly later but direct lineage).

And they were doing it in almost total isolation — deliberately rejecting American rock and roll, British pop, and even the European classical tradition. Can's Tago Mago, Neu!'s first two albums, Kraftwerk's Autobahn, Faust's The Faust Tapes — these records sound like they were made by people who decided to figure out what music could be rather than what it already was.

Brian Eno famously said that Neu!'s motorik beat was one of the three great beats in rock history. David Bowie relocated to Berlin and made his Berlin Trilogy because of this scene. Radiohead, Stereolab, LCD Soundsystem — direct descendants all of them.

Why do you think this particular time and place produced such a concentrated burst of genuinely new ideas? Was it the post-war cultural rupture? The specific geography? Just the right people finding each other?

#Krautrock #Can #Kraftwerk #Neu #ExperimentalMusic #MusicHistory #KosmischeMusik #Discussion #AvantGarde