Various Artists

Beginning in the 1980s, East German musicians began to produce their own versions of Western electronic music from the 1970s. The amazing thing: In a land where engineers and cosmonauts were held up as heroes, nobody, it turned out, wanted to make cold-sounding electronic music. Kraftwerk, for instance, were not the slightest bit influential in the East. Instead, it was all about expansive Krautrock jams that were so psychedelic it's hard to imagine they were not fueled by drugs (though everyone involved claims they really weren't). There were endless synth epics that tell about trips to distant galaxies. There were Balearic ambient sounds that made you daydream about the nude beaches along the Baltic sea. There were disco tracks with heartbreakingly emotional guitar solos.
There were Italo-disco odysseys from artists who had never been anywhere near Lake Garda. The result was a series of virtuosic rip-offs, serendipitous screw-ups, and beautiful misunderstandings.