Various Artist - Kraut! Demons! Kraut! - German Psychedelic Underground 1968-1974 (1999)

This is the kind of compilation you can expect to flourish as the realization comes to pass that several types of special-interest rock cults will not be catered to by the CD explosion. There's no label or catalog number on it, but if you're in a big city or hip college town with a record store oriented toward specialty collectors, you might be able to find it. What we're dealing with here is rare Krautrock, some taken from private pressings that reached only into the three figures. None of these artists will be familiar, even to those who listen to college radio stations willing to play vintage Krautrock, with the exception of Can (represented by a 1969 single, on one side of which the band backed Margareta Juvan). This is actually more accessible than the more widely known, progressive rock-oriented style of Krautrock's salad days, as it bears a heavier influence of late 1960s psychedelia. The groups tend to draw from the more serious and instrumentally virtuosic side of that genre, with Floydian and Doorsian organs, along with some Hendrix-inspired guitar wangling and the denser, more impenetrable Teutonic experimentalism with which Krautrock is commonly identified. Less hip reference points like Jethro Tull and Iron Butterfly also rear their head from time to time. If Krautrock is your thing, raise the three-star rating above a notch; you'll have a hard time finding this elsewhere, and it provides a rather different slant on the style than you'll find in the Krautrock records that have become most famous.