The objectives of German experimental rock and electronic music in the 1970s were to create a new music, 'free' from the past. Music for a generation who grew up stifled by the recent history of Nazi atrocities and the guilt of their parents' generation. The first seeds were planted in 1968, as students and workers in Paris, Prague, Mexico and around the world demonstrated against mainstream society, the war in Vietnam, imperialism and bourgeois values. Many artists and musicians believed a complete rejection of everything musically that had gone before was also necessary in order to build a new identity for German culture. The first recordings of groups such as KLUSTER (later CLUSTER) were extreme experiments with sound; un-music, anti-melody and anti-rhythm - attempts to destroy any musical links with the past. HOLGER CZUKAY and IRMIN SCHMIDT of CAN studied under the radical avant-garde composer KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN and CONRAD SCHNITZLER studied art under the conceptual artist JOSEPH BEUYS. German rock groups were as interested in musique concr te and serial composition as they were in the psychedelia of PINK FLOYD or the rock, soul and jazz music played by resident American forces. Whilst some of the bands featured here slipped by the wayside over the years, others such as FAUST, CLUSTER, CAN, TANGERINE DREAM are now well into their fourth decade having firmly established that which they set out to achieve - a new German music