Favorite songs with the motorik beat

What are some of your favorite songs with the motorik beat?

For those not familiar with the term "motorik", it is music that has a relentless but flowing 4/4 beat. It provides a strong feeling of movement, like driving down the open freeway at a constant but fast pace of speed. The style is considered to have its origins with Mo Tucker in the Velvet Underground, but it was more widely used for the first time by various German bands in the early to mid-1970s, such as NEU!, Can, and Kraftwerk. Brian Eno called it one of the three great beats of the 1970s. However, many bands from all over the world have used the beat in some or many of their songs in the last 40+ years.

Motorik - Wikipedia (definition)

I'll start things off with one of the songs most associated with the motorik sound, the first song on the first NEU! album, with Klaus Dinger laying down the motorik beat.

NEU! - "Hallogallo"

 

The Velvet Underground "What goes on", specially the version on "Live 1969"

 

Absolutely stunning.

 

The Feelies "Forces at work", maybe?

 

The War on Drugs - "An Ocean in Between the Waves"

 

"music that has a relentless but flowing 4/4 beat"

about 99% of bad top 40 my whole life?

 

Kraftwerk, "Ohm Sweet Ohm"

 

Tom Petty - Runnin' Down A Dream

 

Can, "Mother Sky"

 

Hawkwind, "Opa-Loka"

 

Radiohead - "Bodysnatchers"

 

La Düsseldorf, "Lieber Honig 1981"

 

Michael Rother, "Zyklodrom"

 

Interpol - "All the Rage Back Home"


(The drums don't come in until about 50 seconds into the song but excluding about a 10 second stretch about a minute later, play constantly through the rest of the song.)

 

David Bowie, "Red Sails"

 

Hard to pick one track but Fujiya and Miyagi do some tremendous motorik-ing.

 

How about the "Chips" theme song? Seems to fit that description

 

That's a little different kind of beat, not really motorik but instead tied to R&B and disco. Having said that, to my ears many disco songs have beats that aren't too dissimilar to motorik. (For example, think about Chic where Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards wanted Tony Thompson to often lay down a very steady, unvarying 4/4 beat so they could lay down funk riffs and improvise on top of the beat.)

 

Walkabouts - A Long Drive in a Slow Machine

 

?!

I've always wondered what this term referred to, thinking it was some genre-specific Techno beat or other ...

It's just an ordinary fast rock/r&b groove! Been around for sixty+ years, give or take. Probably old hat when Al Jackson or Charlie Watts first deployed it ...

 

Stereolab - "Jenny Ondioline"

 

Uh, not exactly. It is a VERY steady 4/4 beat that by its nature helps create a droning sound. It does have similarities to R&B grooves but it is generally faster.

Listen to some of the clips above to get a sense of what the beat sounds like; the NEU! clip in the first post in the thread is considered one of the best examples of the motorik beat by many people. I think it is the kind of beat that creates a sharp divide among people - some people find it boring as hell because it doesn't vary, while some people think it stretches on and on, perpetually moving forward.

 

This song's drums vary around more than most songs with a motorik beat, but it clearly has a motorik-like beat going on in what I'll the verses. (It is an instrumental song.)

Turing Machine - "Synchronicity III"

 

Primal Scream - Autobahn 66

 

Wilco - Spiders (Kidsmoke)