Forgotten Krautrock

Achim Reichel formed Germany's most popular beat-band The Rattles in 1960 and they got lot of critical acclaim when they played in Starclub in Hamburg when beat-music was the hottest thing. His career stopped when he had to join German army for 18 months. After finishing his military duty he tried to get back in music business. But the times has changed and nobody wanted to listen to beat-music any more. So he tried to find a new sound. Working in his home studio with an Akai-X330D tape.recorder he discovered loops while he pressed the wrong button on the machine. Based on this experience he recorded his first solo album The Green Journey/Die Grüne Reise. It was a drug and psychedelic inspired album. Ruminant percussion, sparse guitar licks and some misty vocals make this record a masterpiece of the Krautrock era. And on my opinion he made trance and industrial before we even knew it.

A.R. & Machines - To The Echo Of Time
A.R. & Machines - Why Peter Is Only On Holidays

The Foreign Correspondent Returns - Stories About German Rock Music # 34

Way back in the times where all the new music and sounds came out an fossil of rock history produced a record that was far away of mainstream. Achim Reichel was lead guitarist of the 60s beat band The Rattles which had a veritable hit single with The Witch. And in 1976 he surprised us with a record of shanties played in rock-style. I know well that I was fascinated of this kind of music but it wasn't opportune to agree with it to many other folks because it was for them old style northern German folk music. Anyway, this record made fun to me and I still listen to it from time to time. Also just in fact that these songs are part of our marine tradition.

He presented with Dat Shanty Albm for the first time an album with sailor's songs. Not only the style changed away from experimental admissions to popular sounds was amazing, but also the fact that Achim Reichel sang in future predominantly German. In 1976 he lined up with the demand: „Folk music must live, and this is able to do them only if one lifts them in the sound picture of the time.“ In his songs the navigation remained from then on a frequent subject. Also classical German and above all North German lyric was set to music by him.

For me this was songs I used to know since my youngest days and sometimes I fall in  love again to this traditional ones again.

Enjoy!

And as a bonus a cover from a song by Elvis Presley that was covered by many artists. For me there a two really good versions. The first was by Nick Cave, the other by Achim Reichel who translated the lyrics in the spirit of the so called king.