sauerkraut!

Back in the world of PKD and reading The World Jones Made. Like all of his novels, this one concerns precognition, or a dude who lives his life one year in the future. Basically he lives his life twice so he always has a sense of Deja Vu. PKD makes this kind of precognition out to be a blessing, but mostly a curse.

Another person who can be considered to have lived in the future is Klaus Dinger. Dinger, along with Michael Rother, was an original member of German electronic pioneers Kraftwerk. However, Dinger and Rother left Kraftwerk because they didn't think the band was pushing the boundaries enough. They went on to form Neu! After Neu disbanded, Klaus went on to form La Düsseldorf with, among others, his brother Thomas. 

Both Neu and La Düsseldorf were well ahead of their time. Indeed, David Bowie once said that La Düsseldorf was the sound of the 80's, even though their seminal LPs were released in '76 and '78. They did make one more record in 1980. I can safely assure you that Neu/La Düsseldorf/Klaus Dinger influenced everyone from the Sex Pistols to Joy Division. OMD even had a b-side called 4 Neu; one of my favorite OMD tracks of all time.

After Neu, Michael Rother went on to make some solo LPs that I'm quite fond of, including: Flammende Herzen and Sterntaler. These records, too, evoked the sound of the 80's well before the decade rolled around. Sometimes I wonder if they too, were living their lives more than once.

I've been digging a lot of this krautrock lately as a matter of fact. Thomas Dinger went on to record some swell solo LPs, including one of my favorite krautrock records, Für Mich. Other current favorites include: Wolfgang Reichmann, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Emtidi, Peter Baumann, and Robert Schroeder. 

As you can imagine, this forward looking music makes the perfect soundtrack for The World Jones Made, and certainly for any other PKD novel you may have lying around. Check out one of my favorite Klaus Dinger/La Düsseldorf songs, "Geld", by clicking on the title of this post.