Favorite songs with the motorik beat

Nisennenmondai - #6 (Chris Carter Remix)

Doesn't appear to be on Youtube but you can hear it on Bandcamp:

#6 (Chris Carter Remix), by Nisennenmondai

 

Sonic Youth - "Sugar Kane"

 

There are quite a few modern bands heavily influenced by krautrock. The most famous of course Stereolab:

 

Fujiya & Miyagi - Knickerbocker (2008):

 

Zombie Zombie - A Land For Renegades (2008):

 

Camera - From The Outside (2014):

 

The Horrors, “Sea Within a Sea”. One of my favourite songs from the first decade of the millennium.

 

I was listening to my VU boxed set “Peel Slowly And See” and while it’s packed with goodness that runs the gamut of music as we know it, "What Goes On" tends to get deeply lodged within my consciousness, due to it having so many traits that I value in music. In its case, many years before the rest of the market even began to catch up. It can be argued that the rest of the market as we know it wouldn’t exist but for the VU’s trailblazing.

First of all, the motorik pulse of Maureen Tucker’s drumming insures that once heard, I can’t shake this puppy. It makes for a propulsive groove that can run indefinitely in my mind. Secondly, the way Lou Reed accents the chorus to echo the drumming is just perfection. “Lady be go-od. Do what you shou-ld, you know it will be alright.” Thirdly, the first twinned guitar solo by Lou Reed simply reeks of techniques that Eno would be exploiting after leaving Roxy Music. In particular the “warm jet” guitar from that album’s title track. And the minimal organ riff was stolen by Eno whole cloth and added to Talking Heads’ “Once In A Lifetime.” What’s that saying? “Great artists steal…?”

Ironically, my first exposure to this song was via Bryan Ferry’s cover on “The Bride Stripped Bare,” which I purchased a good decade before the VU box. I can’t say that the tune ever made an impression on me in Ferry’s hands. The destruction of the song’s compulsive qualities by the finest LA session hacks couldn’t be more unfeelingly vicious and total than it was there. Jerry Marotta shows his “professionalism” by acting out your worst nightmares of what a session drummer is paid to do. The compelling rhythms of Tucker are endlessly expounded upon with unessential rhythmic filigree. Look at meeeeeee. Waddy Wachtel’s groovy solos sound absolutely cemented into 1978 in a way that Reed’s weirdly prescient Post-Punk guitar treatment was definitely not.

The version of this album in the “Peel Slowly And See” Box opened with a live recording of the song before the “closet mix” of the album and the attendant bonus tracks follow. The live version sounds like it was recorded on a portable tape player and is of sub-bootleg quality. That doesn’t diminish its thrill one iota, however! Live, Tucker’s drumming was even more primal and invigorating! Reed was buried so far in the soundstage, one had to strain to hear him sing, but it doesn’t affect my esteem for this recording at all. Reed’s soloing live loses the doubling and chorus effects that made the album version so fascinating and ahead of its time. What it gained live was a metallic immediacy that touches on the sort of sound that Eno got with Fripp on “Baby’s On Fire.” The second solo that takes the place of the organ drone on the LP version is close to what Fripp achieved [years later] on Bowie’s “Fashion!”

As I only have the 1995 boxed set, my copy of “The Velvet Underground” features Lou Reed’s so-called “closet mix,’ which exists digitally only on this CD in the box. Maybe, my appreciation for this tune would require me to get the current stand-alone CD of this album for the Val Valentin remix. I have to study this track more!

 

When Ultravox were in their imperial period from '80-'83 drummer Warren Cann was heavily into a Krautrock sound. So many Ultravox songs from this period were motorik. Yet …so was "Young Turks" by Rod Stewart.

 

Third Uncle

 

According to Julian Cope in his Krautrocksampler book, the track that inspired many krautrock bands is Soft Machine's We Did It Again (1968){

 

Friendly Fires & The Asphodells (aka Andrew Weatherall & Sean Johnstone) - ‘Velo’

 

Speaking of VU, what about "Waiting For the Man"? Pretty relentless rhythm there

 

Another big influence. Especially on Neu!

 

Here's another one from La Düsseldorf - Rheinita from the "Viva" album. I could choose plenty of examples from the band (most of the first album, for example) but this was the first track I heard by them, on the radio in England in 1978, when the album came out. (I think it was on Nicky Horne's show on Capital Radio). I had to go out and get the album, and it's still a favourite.

 

I'm not sure if this is an example, but it sure is drivin'

 

Time for the other obvious NEU! song...

NEU! - "Für Immer"

 

Hawkwind "Uncle Sam's On Mars"

A goodie from the Calvert era.

 

Another band inspired by the Velvet Underground, though this song is probably inspired a little more by Neil Young...

The Dream Syndicate - "Halloween"

 

"Angels and Devils"