(2022) VA - Ost-Kraut! Progressives aus den DDR-Archiven (1970-1975), Teil 1

Review:
OST-KRAUT!: the two-part double CD series – a long overdue addition to our KRAUT! edition – comprehensively documents the history of progressive music in the GDR for the first time with studio and live recordings. Admittedly, this series is a bit of a misnomer – the term ‘Kraut’ was completely uncommon in the GDR music scene, just as ‘rock’ was still dubbed ‘beat’ there until the mid-1970s. However, since about 1970 – and largely unnoticed in the West – many GDR groups played extremely ‘progressive’ music under this label. Since artists and bands in the GDR had to pass a state aptitude test before they were allowed to earn money with their music, the pioneers of GDR (German Democratic Republic) prog often came directly from the music academy – with corresponding craftsmanship. The often sympathetic dilettantism of Western colleagues of the early ’70s was an alien phenomenon to them. In those days, live concerts developed into a real competition between bands to play songs from progressive Western idols like Colosseum, Yes or Emerson, Lake & Palmer faithfully down to the last syncopation – whereby the socialist brother countries, especially Poland and the CSSR, also provided important impulses for the GDR scene. Despite all this, no band in the GDR called itself progressive at the time, if only because the term was otherwise occupied by state cultural policy. In 1970, for example, the youth radio station of the GDR’s German Broadcasting Corporation tried to sell Ludwig van Beethoven and Ernst Busch to its listeners as the true progressives – in clear demarcation from the western rock underground, which was defamed as a ploy of the capitalist music industry. These were the last offshoots of a cultural policy from above that had banished almost the entire, then still young GDR beat scene into the underground by the end of 1965. In contrast to their GDR colleagues, the musicians in socialist brother countries like Hungary, Poland and the CSSR did not suffer from a beat ban in the sixties – their technical and stylistic advantage was now correspondingly considerable. This did not go unnoticed by the music producers at the radio station and at AMIGA, the GDR’s only – and of course state-owned – record company for underground music. Some of the recordings on this compilation provide examples of the ‘development aid’ of groups and performers from the Eastern Bloc given to the GDR scene, especially in the first half of the 1970s. They often re-recorded their successful songs from their home countries in German, which – as you can clearly hear – they sometimes knew more and sometimes less. The first part of the edition ‘Ost-Kraut! Progressives aus den DDR-Archiven’ (East Kraut! – Progressives from the GDR Archives) brings together on two CDs the crème de la crème of the rock scene of the GDR and the then socialist foreign countries with recordings for AMIGA and the Deutsche Rundfunkarchiv (DRA). All the titles were recorded between 1970 and 1975 and were stylishly compiled by journalist and East German rock connoisseur Marcus Heumann. — bear-family.com

Track List:
CD1
01. Peter Holten-Septett - Weiter, Weiter
02. Wir - Zeit
03. Skaldowie - Kennst du das nicht (Czasem kochac chesz)
04. Bayon - Input
05. Czerwone Gitary - Wachsein im Dunkel
06. Ekkehard Sander-Septett - Kein Märchen
07. Puhdys - Steige nicht auf einen Baum
08. Joco-Dev-Sextett - Stapellauf (Erstfassung)
09. Pavol Hammel & Prúdy - Schluss mit dem Märchen
10. Uve Schikora und seine Gruppe - Deine Augen
11. Bürkholz-Formation - Sei kein Vulkan
12. Omega - Zerbrechlicher Schwung
13. Breakout - Ich hab die Sonne (Na dnie mych oczu)
14. Collegium Musicum - Hommage à Johann Sebastian Bach

CD2
01. Electra - Tritt ein in den Dom
02. Die Nautiks - Wir gehen am Meer
03. Lift - Roter Stein
04. The Blue Effect - Clara
05. Klaus Renft Combo - Was mir fehlt
06. Kati Kovács und Juventus - Wind, komm, bring den Regen her (Add Már Uram Az Esot)
07. Panta Rhei - Gib dir selber eine Chance
08. Hungaria - Die Farben der Natur
09. Skaldowie - Ein ferner Punkt (Jak znikajacy punkt)
10. Set - Eisen
11. Illés - Hier stand die Sonne hoch
12. Klosterbrüder & Stern-Combo Meißen - Gedanken an Fusion - Aktivität
13. Jürgen Kerth - Nacht unterwegs
14. Modern Soul-Septett - Sagen


Media Report:
Genre: prog-rock
Country: Germany
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)


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