Six Degrees of Sauerkraut -- Part XXIII: How New Age Killed the Glimmerlight

The onslaught of New Age caught us all by surprise. Imagine, The Nothing which destroyed fantasia despite Atreyu's best efforts. Well, they had told us this had all happened before, and that it would all happen again, but we didn't believe them. We lounged by the deep blue pools in the glimmerlight, or drove our Light Cycles around on lazy Sunday afternoons, never knowing the darkness that was coming.

When, in the mid-80s, Sky Records began to advertise our musik as New Age, we knew this was the beginning of the end. Android synthesists were actually passing the Voight-Kampff test, leaving the glimmerlight, and touring with Yanni! Former replicants such as Ralf Tohde, Bernd Scholl and, to our great dismay, Dieter Schütz, were leaving us. The musik was still ghostly, mechanized, and blue, but it was packaged in a manner that we knew would dry up all the electric streams within the decade.

No one grieved the destruction more than Roedelius. He brought his synth down to the river and wrote the great lament of the glimmerlight, "Schöner Abend." This track reflected on the evening of the glimmerlight; the beautiful evening.

Soon, we would all depart for Silberland, where we would recreate the glimmerlight with the aid of Wolfgang's ghost. But Roedelius' melody is a testament to those Düsseldorf nights. Check it out by clicking on the title of this post.

Six Degrees of Sauerkraut -- Part XI: Die Justiz-League

In the Autumn of '74 the barbarian hordes of Amon Duul the 2nd and Ash Ra Tempel were quickly approaching the high iron gates of Wolfgang Riechmann's Silberland. 

Silberland was the dreamy enclave that Riechmann founded as a kind of home away from home for cyborgs who spent their energy in the glimmerlights. You may remember that scene from Tron where the three dudes sip from the electronic pond with their frisbees. Well that was basically what Silberland was like; a bunch of androids lounging by a neon blue pool. But our peaceful haven was now being threatened by the prog-krautrockian tribes led by Amon Duul II. Wolfgang decided we needed a special force to protect us, so he called upon Moebius, Roedelius, and Rother to be the heroes that would defend our electronic sanctuary.

They christened themselves Harmonia. They were the first krautrock supergroup, our very own Justice League. And they promptly drove the progbarian hordes from our gates with their ghostly bröselmaschine sounds. Rother would eventually don the mantle of Flaming Hawk when he went solo and got his own series, but his powers arguably never equaled the heights he achieved in this group of heroes.  Check out one of their most potent powers by clicking on the title of this post.