Populäre Mechanik

Populäre Mechanik is a German experimental group formed in the early 1980s in Hamburg, associated with the broader Geniale Dilletanten (Brilliant Dilettantes) movement — the West German avant-garde scene that also produced Einstürzende Neubauten, Die Tödliche Doris, Malaria!, Der Plan and others, and that briefly made Berlin and Hamburg into centres of a productive musical amateurism.

Their work combined deliberately crude instrumental technique, ironic pop gestures, avant-garde composition and political commentary in a spirit of productive amateurism that explicitly rejected professional musical conventions.