This is cool -- the Krautrock Album Database. Hundreds of LP covers and samples from 116 of the strangest, trippiest and downright goofiest records to come out of West Germany between 1969 and 1981. If you thought Krautrock was just Amon Duul 2, Can, Faust, Kraftwerk and Neu then there's stuff here to amuse, horrify, enlighten, disappoint and baffle. Some of it is truly awful prog but there are some gems here I've never even read about before...

Like 1970's extremely odd Trip, Flipout, Meditation by Zweistein, which is truly a thing of legend, a relentless and almost impossible to find triple album of sound collages and primitive electronics, put together by Suzanne Doucet, a German pop singer who briefly turned on and dropped out, before going on to record such non-Krautrock items as "Roller Skate is up to date" (with an appropriate cover) and dozens of new age albums -- the story is here. A copy will set you back $200 on eBay, so this might be the only place you'll hear (bits of) it.

It's a shame most of the sound clips are only 30 seconds long as the best Krautrock tracks don't get going for about five minutes. Half a dozen of my favorite albums of all time are here, but the snippets don't even begin to do them justice so I'm not going to tell you what they are.