germany

One of Germany's most legendary musicians, Achim Reichel's career started in 1960 with The Rattles, one of the countries first beat-era bands. The 70s saw him delve into the progressive music scene, first as A.R. & Machines, and then later as a record producer. Reichel's long and successful career as a solo artist started in 1976 with an album of seafaring songs, appropriately enough for the Hamburg native.

Guitarist, sound architecht and composer, Michael Rother is one of Germany's original artists of the progressive era. In the mid 1960s, he was a member of Spirits of Sound with Wolfgangs' Flür and Reichemann, then a member of Kraftwerk, Neu!, and Harmonia until forging a very successful solo career (with Jaki Liebizeit and Conny Plank) towards the late 1970s through the early 1980s.

Along with Manuel Gottsching and Achim Reichel, Günter Schickert is a pioneer of "echo" guitar. Though a prolific musician, he has released just a few albums, thus lending to his relative obscurity.

Along with Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Conrad Schnitzler was a founder of the Zodiak Free Arts Club, the birthplace of the so-called "Berlin School" of electronic music, and perhaps krautrock in general. In 1969, with Edgar Froese and Klaus Schulze, he appeared on the debut Tangerine Dream album, Electronic Meditation. Next, with Roedelius and Dieter Moebius he performed as Kluster. However as typical throughout his career, Schnitzler's music at this time was primarily performance art in nature. It would not be until the later in the decade that he would approach a more (or less) "conventional" recording career. Schnitzler enjoyed a long career as an electronic music artist, but his work with Peter Baumann of Tangerine Dream during the late 70s and early 80s is perhaps most seminal.

Combining the talents of Roye Albrighton of Nektar, Curt Cress and Kristian Schultze of Passport, and Dave King of Embryo, Snowball were a supergroup of sorts, straddling jazz/fusion realms. Latter albums did not surpass their debut.

From their "free-rock" beginnings in the Berlin underground to the eventual triple-keyboard standard that signed to Virgin Records, Tangerine Dream earns significant credit in introducing synthesizer/sequenced electronic music to the world. During the mid to late 70s - their spacey, pulsating music earned them a cult following worldwide. The 80s saw the band releasing lucrative soundtrack work, before settling into the new age bins.

Jürgen Dollase's self-proclaimed "symphonic rock orchestra". Released four interesting albums that feature the drumming of Harald Grosskopf. Later albums had great covers but are of little interest to the progressive listener.

Frank Dostal and Achim Reichel's post-Rattles band scored a series of singles in the late 60s, and produced one strange album as Wonderland Band.