Never a genre or a movement per se, Krautrock encompassed a very wild and diverse range of sounds, attitudes, and past musics, from free jazz to Karlheinz Stockhausen, from dada to Fluxus, from German Romanticism to the Mothers of Invention.

The musicians operated outside any known categories, breaking new ground and turning their backs to both their country's past and the conventions of Anglo-American rock. Their vision fired the imaginations of generations of musicians after them: Cabaret Voltaire, Brian Eno, Nurse with Wound, PiL, DAF, Einstürzende Neubauten, to only name a few, have all acknowledged their debt to Krautrock's uncompromising, outsider ethics and far-out sounds."