Conrad “Conny” Plank sits at the center of my mental map of experimental European rock. Active from the late 1960s until his death in 1987, he helped shape Kraftwerk during their early Kling Klang years, captured the motorik pulse of Neu! in the early 1970s, and refined the abstract electronics of Cluster and Harmonia. By the late ’70s and early ’80s, his studio became a magnet for outsiders like Ultravox, Eurythmics, and Devo, bridging krautrock experimentation with emerging synth-pop and post-punk.