Calling Konrad ‘Conny’ Plank the Phil Spector of Krautrock not only mischaracterises the more collaborative approach of a producer and sound engineer who, by all accounts, was polite, modest and unassuming, but also reduces the scope and impact of his work, which stretches far beyond German experimental music in the 1970s.
Born in West Germany in 1940, like Can’s Irmin Schmidt and Holger Czukay, Plank studied under avant-garde maestro Stockhausen at Cologne’s Rheinische Musikschule. Yet his practical training was as a studio engineer in the 1960s, where he developed not just a deep knowledge of acoustics, mic placements and tape manipulation, but a revolutionary approach to sound itself – its shape, noise and texture.
Though he viewed himself more as a conduit and facilitator than mixing desk control freaks like Spector or Brian Wilson (“I’m not a creator who has a character and stamps it on every note. I’m a channel between musicians, sounds and tape,” he once modestly shrugged), Plank’s fingerprints are all over the records he helped bring into the world.
The core texts of krautrock and kosmische by Kraftwerk, Neu!, Cluster and Harmonia, through his later work shaping the sound of post-punk and electronic pop with records by the likes of D.A.F, Devo, Ultravox, Killing Joke and Eurythmics – they all have Plank’s sense of space; his driving, minimalist rhythms; and the creation of never-before-heard sounds that somehow manage to feel both thrillingly futuristic and at times charmingly homemade.
Alongside some of his key collaborators – Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Michael Rother, and, for a time, the members of Kraftwerk – Plank sought to create a new music, one that was both free from the traditions of European classical and folk music, and also the blues-based rock’n’roll that had sprung forth from America in the previous decades.
Plank’s influence is clear on the work of sometime collaborator and eager student Brian Eno, admirers such as Giogio Moroder and David Bowie, and out-and-out disciple and evangelist Martin Hannett, who applied Plank’s philosophies and methods to Factory charges Joy Division and New Order. Yet you can also hear his work echoing through Chicago house, hip hop, techno, dub, electronica, ambient, and beyond.
Though he was choosey about his commissions (he famously turned down U2 and suggested Eno for the gig) and often didn’t receive full credit on some records (on Kraftwerk’s Autobahn he is listed merely as an engineer), Plank’s discography is long and varied, so this list is by no means a comprehensive overview, more a roadmap to some of the landmarks in a true sonic visionary’s career.