Kraan - Hellmut Hattler

moonliner · Post by **moonliner** » Mon May 29, 2006 6:31 pm

Back in high school (1980) a friend of mine gave me a cassette tape of a band from Germany called Kraan. The bass player, Hellmut Hattler had that distinct tone which I immediately identified as a Rickenbacker. They were a mostly instrumental prog/rock-ish band and on the tape (it was their album, Kraan Live!) the tunes often took off into great jams featuring the bass player, drummer and guitar player. I mostly overlook the vocals and electric sax, but all in all it's very fun stuff with some wonderful, quirky Rickenbacker playing by Hellmut. It may sound a bit dated, but it's highly recommended.

moonliner · Post by **moonliner** » Mon May 29, 2006 6:49 pm

Here's another little photo.

pekka · Post by **pekka** » Tue May 30, 2006 7:15 am

I have a couple of their albums. "Andy Nogger" (1974), the aforementioned "Live" and another live "Tournee" (1980). The later live album is a lot slicker stuff than the earlier but pretty good still. The electric sax player Alto Pappert had gone and they had a keyboard player at his place. Superb drumming from Udo Dahmen and Peter Wolfbrant's guitar playing was definitely an influence to Ozric Tentacles.

There's a great and informative Kraan site here:
http://www.danbbs.dk/~m-bohn/kraan/

Lots of great pictures which show that Hattler played a Telecaster/early Precision during the early days and I'm also recognising a T-Bird neck at one picture.

Hattler also made a solo album called "Bassball".

EDIT: Apparently it's not a T-Bird but some Explorer -shaped thing.
http://www.danbbs.dk/~m-bohn/kraan/rolf ... Dez_76.jpg