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Germany

Cologne, 1968 — the Inner Space

Can

Before Can there was the Inner Space. In May 1968, keyboardist Irmin Schmidt and bassist Holger Czukay, both former students of composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, put a group together in Cologne for a film-scoring job. Those sessions are the earliest recordings in the band's lineage, cut months before American sculptor Malcolm Mooney joined as vocalist and suggested a simpler name: Can. Mooney sang lead on the debut album proper, 1969's Monster Movie. After that one record, a psychiatrist's advice sent him home to New York.

1978 — "the Godfathers of Techno"

DAF

Gabi Delgado-López and Robert Görl met at Düsseldorf's Ratinger Hof punk club in 1978 and formed Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft, or DAF. It started as a five-piece and was down to the two of them by 1981: Delgado-López's voice over Görl's self-built electronic rhythms, with no use for rock's usual toolkit. Mute Records founder Daniel Miller signed them for exactly that reason, and John Peel later called them "the Godfathers of Techno." Their 1981 album Gold und Liebe was produced by Conny Plank, the studio hand behind Kraftwerk and Can.

Munich, 1968 — a commune splits

Amon Düül II

Amon Düül started in 1967 as a political commune in Munich, not as a band. In September 1968 an ideological split at Germany's first underground festival divided it. One faction carried on as the original, free-form act, and the other, tighter and stranger, became Amon Düül II. Their 1969 debut, Phallus Dei, has Renate Knaup-Krötenschwanz, the band's only woman, among its singers, and is widely credited as a founding document of krautrock.

Großenkneten — far from any scene

Trio

Trio formed in 1979 in Großenkneten, a small town far from any scene. Stephan Remmler sang, Gert "Kralle" Krawinkel played guitar, and Peter Behrens played drums, reportedly one-handed some nights so he could eat an apple with the other. With producer Klaus Voormann, a former Beatles associate, and little more than a basic Casio keyboard, they reached number two in both Germany and the UK in 1982 and charted in some thirty countries. Fifteen years later, a 1997 Volkswagen commercial introduced them to an entirely new American audience.

1992 — a record, no band behind it

Abfahrt

Almost nothing is known about Abfahrt beyond what's printed on their 1992 record for the German label Abfahrt Records. It credits music to Helmut Apel, production to Torsten Fenslau and words to Nosie Katzmann. There are no interviews, no biography, no other trace of who they were outside the studio. The record got a second life anyway: the following year it was licensed to the UK's Guerilla Records, with new remixes by Belfast producer David Holmes. It's one small acid-trance release, and the people who passed it along never learned much more about it than that.

Hamburg, 1972 — backed by Faust

Slapp Happy

English composer Anthony Moore formed Slapp Happy in Hamburg in 1972 with Peter Blegvad and singer Dagmar Krause. For their debut album they borrowed an unlikely backing band, Faust, and recorded at Faust's own studio in Wümme with Faust's own producer, Uwe Nettelbeck. A few years later the band moved to England and to Virgin Records, where they worked with Peter Jenner, Pink Floyd's early manager and producer.

Berlin — a singer who's a novelist

Element of Crime

Sven Regener formed Element of Crime in West Berlin in 1985, and the band sang in English on its first four albums. Try to Be Mensch (1987) was produced by Velvet Underground co-founder John Cale, who also plays keyboards on several of its tracks. They didn't switch to German lyrics until the end of the decade, and broke through fully with 1991's Damals hinterm Mond. Regener still fronts the band four decades on. He is also a bestselling novelist: he wrote Herr Lehmann and adapted it for the screen himself.

The Collection