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Kraftwerk is plenty abstract, they just put a very slick sauce over it and were much better at marketing themselves and running a business. Some digging around turned this up: "Obviously inspired by artists like the Silver Apples German artists/musicians Conrad Schnitzler and Hans-Joachim Roedelius started The Zodiak Free Arts Lab in an old building in West Berlin in the Halleschen Ufer, Kreuzberg. In fact it was (and still is) a theatre called the Schaubühne but at night the duo could use parts of the building. The Zodiak was sub-divided into two main performance areas, one of which was painted completely white and the other completely black, and was filled with all kinds of instruments, amps and speakers which people could more or less do with as they pleased. Here, musicians were allowed to experiment with free jazz, psychedelic rock and avant-garde styles. Conventional forms of music were frowned upon: a phrase frequently used to describe the spirit of the times was that "songs were considered bourgeois." Among the many artists and bands who passed through the Zodiak in their early days were Ash Ra Tempel, Geräusche (Noises), Plus/Minus, Curly Curve, Per Sonore, Human Being, The Agitation later Agitation Free, Klaus Schulze and, most significantly, Tangerine Dream. The club played an important role in the development of a style of music that would later be called krautrock. Acts like Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Amon Düül, Can and Neu all originated from the lab and would take up tape loops and synthesizers as an important part of their act. " The timing works out just about right, and I hear a lot of 'Autobahn' in 'Oscillations'. It'd be nice if someone asked while there is still a chance. |