Define Krautrock. Ask Julian Cope: "Krautrock is what Punk would have been if Johnny Rotten alone had been in charge - a kind of Pagan Freakout LSD Explore-the-god-in-you-by-working-the-animal-in-you Gnostic Odyssey. A sort of very fit Hawkwind without the Doomsday Science-Fiction."

Krautrocksampler is Cope's second book, follow-up to his Head On (auto)biography of the early 80s Liverpool scene. It grew out of two articles penned for the indispensable access-all-areas music monthly The Wire, both of which now feature as chapters in here. In case you didn't see it from Julian's words, Krautrock was, loosely, avant-garde druggy-mantric space-rock played by the coolest of the cool German bands in the early 70s. Or Kosmische Musik, if you will. (There is debate over racist overtones to "Krautrock", if you must.)

The man in the Glastonbury pixie-hat traces the form from American servicemen's band The Monks (LP: Black Monk Time) based in Germany in the late 60s; through great names - Faust, Can, Neu! (pronounced 'NOY'), Amon Duul 1 and Amon Duul 2 (and don't you dare confuse the two), Cluster (or Kluster), Ash Ra Tempel, The Cosmic Couriers, Popol Vuh - and the involvement of on-the-run drug-guru-turned-tedious-old-man Timothy Leary; to the scene's eventual self-destruction at the hands of one Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser in the mid-70s.

This is a history, certainly, and yes, Krautrock has been unjustly ignored for too long, but what makes the book exciting is Cope's highly idiosyncratic style (and this after his wife's "fastidious" editing) that throws in Capital Letters almost at random, litters the text with personal asides, enthusiasms and prejudices. Opinionated hardly enters into it.

88 pages are taken to tell a history; the remainder are a dozen or so terrific colour pages of LP sleeves (the book is beautifully designed), and Cope's personal list of Top 50 Krautrockers. The book only begins to shake slightly when the author then dissects each LP in detail, pages which, without the records to compare, are hard to fathom. And not least Cope's frankly absurd descriptive prose: No.30 Harmonia's Musik Von Harmonia has "rhythm that has all the urgency of a fat man in a kid's paddling pool"; No.32 Kraftwerk's eponymous debut "picks up speed and it's the Stooges at Toys R Us."

Why does it matter? Because the aftershocks are still out there everywhere if you care to ask. Look no further for the roots of Tangerine Dream (and duck as Julian lambasts the band they became). John Lydon's post-Sex Pistols Metal Box-era PIL owed more than a nod to it. The great innovator Brian Eno borrowed from it. The Fall, Cope himself (check his Queen Elizabeth LP), continental poppers Stereolab, The Orb, the brilliant American Krautrock inheritors Cul de Sac, Sonic Youth, and (back to Germany) breathtaking guitarist Caspar Brotzmann.

It's the research, the enthusiasm, the excitement Cope brings to it all that makes his book so good. There is passion here and it's infectious. He tells you where to find these records; it's as much as any reasonable human being can do not to rush out and buy them all immediately.