Schnitzler is often hailed as one of Krautrock's ur-fathers: the man who injected some wild atonal grit into Tangerine Dream's first outing 'Electronic Meditation', and who kick-started Moebius and Roedelius's career with the short-lived 'Kluster'...Schnitzler studied sculpture with Joseph Beuys, but sites Stockhausen along with Cage and Pierre Schaeffer as prime influences. "Rot", recorded in 1972, was Schnitzler's first solo album and the start of a steady exploration of electric timbre and cut-up. The titles of the two 20 minute tracks "Meditation" and "Krautrock" sound more like intros to hippy freakouts, but no so. "Meditation" takes a held chord - more a mechanical hum than a drone - and strafes it with thin timbres and burst of muddy sound. There's a kind of proto-industrial feel, but without any relation to The Velvets' grooves or gothic shadowboxing. Just whines and sirens and mewling electricity pulsating across a blank canvas. Synth notes triggering multiple echoes create a regular pulse while textures shift from thin and whistling to frothy and granular. "Krautrock" is more manically energised.

This is one of Schnitzler's many mind-blowing electronic works. There he was, in 1972, squeezing sounds out his his crude machinery that would not sound out of place on Kraftwerk's "Autobahn", Throbbing Gristle's "20 Jazz Funk Greats" and everything else that has been called "electronic" since. This alternates between slightly spacier zones than much of Schnitzler's output, as well as the clanging industrial symphonies heard on most of his work. An excellent introduction to the great man's work