KRAAN - Tour 2026

What would the history of German rock music be without Kraan? Undoubtedly not only incomplete, but above all one particularly colorful, highly creative chapter poorer.
Right from the start of their career, Kraan dedicated themselves to an exciting fusion of rock, jazz and ethnic influences and later added US mainstream and soul elements to their sound. They called their style 'Wintrup Musik', named after their home in the Teutoburg Forest. A small inheritance in May 1970 was the initial spark for the band. The four original 'Kraaniche' Peter Wolbrandt, Jan Fride, Hellmut Hattler and Alto Pappert threw their money together and bought a sound system plus a band bus. They recorded their debut album in a 2-day (!) studio session and also cultivated a penchant for spontaneity. The figureheads of Kraan were bassist Hellmut Hattler and guitarist Peter Wolbrandt, who were also the band's two main songwriters.
Kraan enjoyed the life of a musical commune. A disused pasture estate, a half-timbered building built in 1871 with around 4,000 square meters of land, situated on the edge of the Teutoburg Forest, was their home in the 1970s. Count Metternich had made the former horse stud available to the musicians - free of charge and without conditions. They lived there with 13 like-minded people (four musicians, the manager, two roadies, three wives, three children and several cats and dogs). Hattler characterized the philosophy of living together at the time with the words: "There is a friendly anarchy here. We deliberately didn't make any plans about who has to clean where and when, or who has washing-up duty. Of course, it's quite difficult because we have to rely on our own insight." Because: "If everything is right in the kitchen, the music is fine too."

Although confronted with such banalities in everyday life, the band developed into one of the most extraordinary German formations over the next few years. Their third release 'Andy Nogger' (the album title was critical of consumer terror and a reference to the ice cream advertising slogan 'Nogger Dir einen') sold 120,000 copies. The album was released in Austria, Switzerland, Holland, Canada, Australia, England, Scandinavia and South Africa and was named record of the year by the German magazine 'Musikexpress'. Just four weeks after its release in America, the album was number 9 in the Billboard charts as the most played LP on all US stations. After three studio albums, their double album 'Kraan Live' was recorded in October 1974 in Berlin's 'Quartier Latin', one of the outstanding jazz rock albums of the day, recorded and edited by legendary producer Conny Plank. After an acclaimed performance at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark in June 1975, Kraan replaced Alto Pappert, who had left the band, with pianist/organist Ingo Bischof. With the following, also great 'Let It Out' album, which was produced by Conny Plank in a mobile studio in Wintrup, quasi between horse stable and kitchen stove, Kraan became the group of the year in the magazine 'Sounds'. The 'ME' also liked the band: "Long collective improvisations between jazz, rock and blues are interrupted with playful ease for a few bars of arranged parts," wrote the magazine in November 1975. "This shows real skill and the Kraan people realize their unusual musical ideas with such sensitivity and precision, as if they wanted to wink at the genius of a Frank Zappa."

After 'Let It Out', a new era began for Kraan. The two following albums 'Wiederhören' (1977) and 'Flyday' (1978), but especially the '83 opus 'Nachtfahrt' (with the release of the second live album 'Tournee' in between), reflected the changing zeitgeist. The New German Wave entered the German music scene. Kraan did not remain uninfluenced by it. And vice versa. Hattler: "Many of these bands were Kraan fans and were impressed by what we did on 'Flyday', especially Peter's arpeggio guitar style, and incorporated these elements into their music. 'Nachtfahrt', on the other hand, was a more or less ironic examination of the music scene at the time." However, both releases were only partly genuine Kraan records, but rather - as Hattler puts it - "half solo works by Peter and half by me." At that time, Kraan no longer existed as a creative and producing band like in Wintrup's time; the group's activities were limited to touring in changing line-ups until 1984. After that, it was supposed to be the end for good, but the third stage album 'Live '88' was released in 1988, followed by the last two studio albums 'Dancing In The Shade' and 'Soul Of Stone'.
A performance at the 'Dokumenta' in Kassel in 1992 closed the Kraan story for almost the entire decade of the 90s.
Hattler continued his career with trumpeter Joo Kraus, who could already be heard on the last Kraan releases, in the formation Tab Two, Wolbrandt devoted himself to his learned profession as a graphic designer and programmer and it was only on the occasion of Kraan's thirtieth anniversary in spring 2000 that the band reformed with Hattler as the line-up, Wolbrandt, Bischof and Fride, released the two anniversary concerts ('Live2001'), played an extremely successful tour of Germany and released their comeback album 'Through' at the end of June 2003, which miraculously and seamlessly continues the old virtues without sounding dusty or outdated by the spirit of the times. On the follow-up Psychedelic Man (for which EMI reanimated their legendary "Harvest" label), this unmistakable band proves to be a cornucopia of creativity and musicality that is unique in this form in Germany.

Since the beginning of 2008, the desire that had long been in the air to play live again more freely and according to the abilities of the original members has been realized. Since then, KRAAN has "only" consisted of the three founding members Peter Wolbrandt, Hellmut Hattler and Jan Fride Wolbrandt, completed celebrated tours and released their latest album with this line-up in 2011, entitled "Diamonds", which sounds ultra-modern and yet 100% like KRAAN, thus clearly demonstrating that this band does not seem to be subject to any kind of time scheme; after all, no predicate is used as often in connection with KRAAN as the word "timeless".

In 2008, KRAAN slimmed down to a classic core trio without ever sounding like one. The three school friends Peter and Jan Fride Wolbrandt and Hellmut Hattler did not become custodians of their own legacy, but wrote new songs, produced fresh albums and interpreted their own classics with virtuosity, funkiness and extreme drive. Time and again, they proved that they are simply unbeatable in their very own Kraan terrain between rock and jazz. With "The Trio Years" and "The Trio Years - Encore!", you can hear the best - and moreover the complete repertoire of the past live years, and that's not all: at the end of 2020 (after ten years) a new studio album entitled "Sandglass" was also released.

The story seems to continue unabated even after more than 50 years (1971-2021)...