motorik
Julian Cope surprisingly says very little about motorik in his defining book, Krautrock Sampler. In fact, he says nothing at all about this perplexing, monotonous-in-a-good-way, style of drum ryhthm punctuated by a tag-along bassline that was born out of a few particularly great krautrock songs. What he does say is this: "oh, dee der dat dut dat dut dat duh-dah, oh, dee der dat dut dat dut dat duh-dah, oh, dee der dat dut dat dut dat duh-dah", he calls it a "clatterdrum-groove" and a "machine-gun stutter" which leads me to believe that the term motorik was applied later. He's still the only one to have bothered to write a book on the subject. However the term motorik is now applied to this weird sound, and often credited to Neu! drummer Klaus Dinger (though there is at least one Supremes song with an identical beat), who himself referred to that kind of rhythm as his "apache beat" which I think is as good a term as any. Motorik simply means motor skills, which I would think would have to be pretty fine tuned to do this kind of drumming. Bands like Neu! and CAN ran miles with motorik, and usually the best examples of their use of it is embedded in songs that are some twenty-minutes long, which makes the idea of a mix-tape on the subject a lot to swallow. And it's not so much the drumming as it is the bass-thwunk that accompanies it, you need the combination for it to work. And when it does work it has the ability to take you on a journey thru innerspace via the central nerveous system. Motorik found it's way into several other styles of music, often ones that were informed by krautrock, like space-rock, and certainly post-punk. I have been trying for months to put together the definitive motorik sampler, and everytime I try to work on it it just gets bigger and bigger. Here I offer you some of my favorites, omitting the ridiculously long songs, because I fear you'd lose interest if I did, and then some that you probably already have.
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1. neu! :: hallogallo 1971
2. boredoms :: heart 1999
3. the clean :: point that thing somewhere else 1981
4. fujiya + miyagi :: ankle injuries 2006
5. public image ltd. :: socialist 1979
6. portishead :: silence 2008
7. broadcast :: pendulum 2003
8. whitey :: towface 2004
9. blonde redhead :: bipolar 1997
10. fujiya + miyagi :: hundreds + thousands 2008
11. clinic :: harmony 2002
12. can :: moonshake 1973
13. caribou :: bees 2005
14. neu! :: negativland 1972
15. radiohead :: jigsaw falling into place 2007
16. the horrors :: sea within a sea 2009
17. stereolab :: wow + flutter 1993
18. can :: vitamin c 1972
19. the go-betweens :: on the core of a flame 1986
20. film school :: dear me 2007
21. ooioo :: be sure to loop 2001
22. can :: mother sky (reedited) 1970
23. electrelane :: bells 2005