Kraftwerk
Related: electronic music - German music
One of the more interesting aspects of the late seventies and early eighties music of Kraftwerk is its influence on black music, more specifically the 'electro funk' movement initiated by Bambaataa and the likes. [Mar 2005]
When Kraftwerk bought a Moog synthesizer, it enabled them to harness their long electronic pieces to a drum machine. The first fruit of this was "Autobahn," a 22-minute motorway journey, from the noises of a car starting up to the hum of cooling machinery. In 1975, an edited version of "Autobahn" was a top 10 hit. It wasn't the first synth hit --that honor belongs to Gershon Kingsley's hissing "Popcorn," performed by studio group Hot Butter -- but it wasn't a pure novelty either. [Aug 2006]
Computer World (1981) - Kraftwerk [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Profile
Kraftwerk (German for "power plant") is a German avant-garde electro-pop group from Düsseldorf who was largely responsible for much of the subsequent uptake of, and interest in, electronic music. The techniques that they introduced and the equipment that they developed are now commonplace in modern music. Today many popular techno DJs refer to them as one of their most important influence. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraftwerk [Oct 2004]Computer World (1981) - Kraftwerk
Computer World is a 1981 album by Kraftwerk. It was released in German as Computer Welt. It deals with the themes of the rise of computers within society. The track "Computer World" lacks approximately half the lyrics of the German "Computerwelt", and subsequently most of its meaning. The last track is a pun based on the slogan "It's more fun to compete" as could be seen on pinball machines of the time. Many see this album as a peak in the career of Kraftwerk, along with Autobahn. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_World [Oct 2004]
This is the album pundits like to point to when they accuse Kraftwerk of being digital-age visionaries; an all-too-easy assessment to make in the face of tracks such as "Home Computer" and "Computer Love" (not an ode to one-hand typing!). But to saddle the band with the reputation of sages is to completely miss the low-key wit and all-too-human playfulness of this album. "Pocket Calculator" and "Numbers" (the lyrics: numbers one to eight--period) could be read as tongue-in-cheek ripostes to too much bad "educational" programming, but that would smack of creeping punditry. Computer World is Kraftwerk's most lovable bundle of contradictions: at once its most technologically obsessed album and its most human. --Jerry McCulley, Amazon.com
Influence on early hip hop culture
Kraftwerk, the showroom dummies who caused Bambaataa to scratch his head and say, "'Scuse the expression, this is some weird shit". For "Planet Rock", Bam used the melody from the 1977 "Trans Europe Express". Over the distinctive 808 beat, the effect was spectral. The idea of making music from pocket calculators appealed to kids accustomed to scratching vinyl. -- David Toop via The A to Z of Electro via The Wire Magazine, 1998
House
Before the release of Electric Cafe, Kraftwerk, devoted clubbers for some time, had been flattered by the adoring attentions of the New York dance scene. They called New York remixer Francois Kevorkian after seeing his name crop up on 'twenty or thirty' 12" dance records they had bought and enjoyed. Kevorkian, who had cut his teeth DJ-ing and remixing some of the great Prelude label disco records was flattered and, while mixing tracks planned for the aborted Techno Pop LP during the period before Electric Cafe, showed the group around clubs like The Loft and The Paradise Garage. Much has been written since this period about Kraftwerk being the originators of house. This was (and is still) a nice idea but the truth is far more complex. Due to the relatively cheap availability of drum machines and synthesisers from Japanese companies like Roland (the feted 808 and 909 drum machines both originated in this period) something was bound to happen anyway. Add to this the fact that many of the early DIY house records were electronic by default- made by disco-obsessed producers who would really have preferred a 50 piece orchestra had they been able to afford it. - John McCready [...]
Trance
"The 'soul' of the machines has always been a part of our music. trance always belongs to repetition, and everybody is looking for trance in life... in sex, in the emotional, in pleasure, in anything... so, the machines produce an absolutely perfect trance."[...]
--Ralf Hütter, 1991, quoted in Kraftwerk: Man Machine and Music, Pascal Bussy
Synthetic electronic sounds
Industrial rhythms all around
Musique nonstop
Techno pop
--Kraftwerk: "Techno Pop" (1986)
Postwar Germany [...]
Kraftwerk stand at the bridge between the old, European avant-garde and today's Euro-American pop culture. Like many others of their generation, Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter were presented with a blank slate in postwar Germany: as Hütter explains, "When we started, it was like shock, silence. Where do we stand? Nothing. We had no father figures, no continuous tradition of entertainment. Through the '50s and '60s, everything was Americanized, directed toward consumer behavior. We were part of this 1968 movement, where suddenly there were possibilities, then we started to establish some form of German industrial sound." - Jon SavageKrautrock
In the late '60s, there was a concerted attempt to create a distinctively German popular music. Liberated by the influence of Fluxus (LaMonte Young and Tony Conrad were frequent visitors to Germany during this period) and Anglo-American psychedelia, groups like Can and Amon Düül began to sing in German --the first step in countering pop's Anglo-American centrism. - Jon Savage [...]
Avant Garde
Another element in the mix was particularly European: electronic composers like Pierre Schaeffer and Karlheinz Stockhausen, who, like Fluxus, continued Russolo's fascination with the use of nonmusical instruments. - Jon Savage [...]Autobahn
At the same time, Kraftwerk bought a Moog synthesizer, which enabled them to harness their long electronic pieces to a drum machine. The first fruit of this was "Autobahn," a 22-minute motorway journey, from the noises of a car starting up to the hum of cooling machinery. In 1975, an edited version of "Autobahn" was a top 10 hit. It wasn't the first synth hit --that honor belongs to Gershon Kingsley's hissing "Popcorn," performed by studio group Hot Butter-- but it wasn't a pure novelty either. - Jon SavageTrans Europe Express (1977) - Kraftwerk
The breakthrough came with 1977's Trans-Europe Express: again, the concentration on speed, travel, pan-Europeanism. The album's center is the 13-minute sequence that simulates a rail journey: the click-clack of metal wheels on metal rails, the rise and fade of a whistle as the train passes, the creaking of coach bodies, the final screech of metal on metal as the train stops. If this wasn't astounding enough, 1978's Man Machine further developed ideas of an international language, of the synthesis between man and machine. --Jon Savage in MACHINE SOUL, A History Of Techno [originally appeared in The Village Voice Summer 1993 "Rock & Roll Quarterly" insert.]
Trans-Europe Express - Kraftwerk [Amazon.com]
[FR] [DE] [UK]
1. Europe Endless
2. The Hall Of Mirrors
3. Showroom Dummies
4. Trans-Europe Express
5. Metal On Metal
6. Franz Schubert
7. Endless
It's ironic that electronica's forefathers include two German bands whom, at least on the surface, were polar opposites. On the one hand, there was Can--shaggy, Stockhausen-trained advocates of trance improvisation--and on the other, Kraftwerk: clean-cut control freaks and masters of the pristine machine groove. Yet, even at their most robotic, Kraftwerk manages to locate the soul of the machine, as they demonstrate throughout this 1977 outing. Hell, the mannequin manifesto "Showroom Dummies" alone is worth the price of admission. For a band so closely tied to technology, it's a testament to Ralf and Florian that their music continues to sound fresh more than two decades down the autobahn. --Bill Forman
Industrial
Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, the Normal all began as brutalist noise groups, for whom entropy and destruction were as important a part of technology as progress, but all of them were moving toward industrial dance rhythms by 1976-79. - Jon Savage [...]Electronic Dance Music
The idea of electronic dance music was in the air from 1977 on. Released as disco 12" records in the U.S., cuts like "Trans-Europe Express" and "The Robots" coincided with Giorgio Moroder's electronic productions for Donna Summer, especially "I Feel Love." This in turn had a huge influence on Patrick Cowley's late '70s productions for Sylvester: synth cuts like "You Make Me Feel Mighty Real" and "Stars" were the start of gay disco. Before he died in 1982, Cowley made his own synthetic disco record, the dystopian "Mind Warp."Black Music
More surprisingly, Kraftwerk had an immediate impact on black dance music: as Afrika Bambaataa says in David Toop's Rap Attack, "I don't think they even knew how big they were among the black masses back in '77 when they came out with 'Trans-Europe Express.' When that came out, I thought that was one of the best and weirdest records I ever heard in my life." In 1981, Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force, together with producer Arthur Baker, paid tribute with "Planet Rock," which used the melody from "Trans-Europe Express" over the rhythm from "Numbers." In the process they created electro and moved rap out of the Sugarhill age. -- Jon Savage via © Jon Savage The Village Voice Summer 1993 "Rock & Roll Quarterly" insert
George Clinton
Derrick May once described techno as "just like Detroit, a complete mistake. It's like George Clinton and Kraftwerk stuck in an elevator." "I've always been a music lover," says Juan Atkins. "Everything has a subconscious effect on what I do. In the 1970s I was into Parliament, Funkadelic; as far back as '69 they were making records like Maggot Brain, America Eats Its Young. But if you want the reason why that happened in Detroit, you have to look at a DJ called Electrifying Mojo: he had five hours every night, with no format restrictions. It was on his show that I first heard Kraftwerk." - Derrick MayCDs
- Tour De France Soundtracks (2003) - Kraftwerk [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK]
1. Prologue 2. Tour De France 03 - Etape 1 3. Tour De France 03 - Version 2 4. Tour De France 03 - Etape 3 5. Chrono 6. Vitamin 7. Aero Dynamik 8. Titanium 9. Elektrokardiogramm 10. La Forme 11. Regeneration 12. Tour De FranceAmazingly, the original and easily the best synth-meisters are back in our music shops with original material. Kraftwerk, the musical power station who revolutionised music with Autobahn in the 1970s, release Tour De France Soundtracks. It’s a collection of 12 “soundtracks” that are, as you’d expect, largely instrumental save for the odd German or French computerised words spoken over the top of this wall of e-sound.
All the tracks roll into each other with effortless ease, making this a CD just short of an hour in length that has no real barriers, no real borders, just electronic themes and pop perfection. Twenty years after Kraftwerk released their landmark single, Tour De France, this is a logical progression of that celebration of the legendary French cycle race. Tour De France themes pierce the new album and can be found in tracks such as "Areo Dynamik", "Titanium", "Vitamin" and "Elektro Kardiogramm". Each track is cleverly thought out, combined with simple but effective sound effects and each has a distinct sense of individuality amidst an easily recognisable collective sound that penetrates the CD in general.
Some have called Kraftwerk the “electronic Beatles” because over the last 30 years their influence has been so wide-ranging. While this may be a title that takes some getting used to, there is no doubt at all that the Düsseldorf quartet have seen their musical excellence radiate out amongst a range of top names. In the 1970s, David Bowie and the post punk futurists pledged their allegiance, followed by New Order, Depeche Mode and a host of others in the 1980s. In the 1990s and beyond, Kraftwerk tunes have been sampled by everyone from Moby to Beck and The Chemical Brothers. It’s an impressive history and the new album is a welcome addition to what we have been presented with in the past. --peter naldrett for music-critic.com
- El Baile Aleman - Senor Coconut Y Su Conjunto [1 CD, Amazon US]
First, I must confess that tropical music isn't my cup of tea, after this, I want to state that the work that made Sr. Coconut left me fascinated! The way he give the felling, own from tropical music, to the electronic originals, is so warm [I dare to say 'organic'] so you can forget that are made from sampled instruments. The traditional marimbas and güiros run beautifully through almost all the tracks; the vocal work of this guy (Argenis Brito) is well done, and even less robotic and more close to a conventional 'charanguero' singer. -- Nestor Gonzalez Vargas for Amazon.com [more ...] - Computer World (1981) - Kraftwerk [Amazon.com]
This is the album pundits like to point to when they accuse Kraftwerk of being digital-age visionaries; an all-too-easy assessment to make in the face of tracks such as "Home Computer" and "Computer Love" (not an ode to one-hand typing!). But to saddle the band with the reputation of sages is to completely miss the low-key wit and all-too-human playfulness of this album. "Pocket Calculator" and "Numbers" (the lyrics: numbers one to eight--period) could be read as tongue-in-cheek ripostes to too much bad "educational" programming, but that would smack of creeping punditry. Computer World is Kraftwerk's most lovable bundle of contradictions: at once its most technologically obsessed album and its most human. --Jerry McCulley, Amazon.com
Books
- Kraftwerk: Man, Machine and Music - Pascal Bussy, Mick Fish [1 book, Amazon US]
A German band invented the sound of humans and machines making love. Formed by Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider in 1970, Dusseldorf's Kraftwerk ("power plant") pioneered electronic dance music before Madonna got her first training bra and trusted technology (i.e., the drum machine) before the personal computer. These studies are the first in America to document Kraftwerk's impact. Barr, music commentator for The Face and Dazed & Confused, argues that the German foursome (Wolfgang Fl r joined in 1973, Karl Bartos in 1975) was the first band since the Beatles to revolutionize popular culture with what started as a backbeat. To prove this, the book opens with Kraftwerk's rapturous comeback at Tribal Gathering '97--an all-night electro-hop in the English countryside. The same summer, bands influenced by Kraftwerk finally gained popular acceptance and achieved buzz bin status on MTV. After careful consideration of the band's avant-garde mentors, Barr makes another convincing case: in 1977, David Bowie's Low and Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange set the stage for Kraftwerk's first masterstroke, Trans-Europe Express. Barr must love to dance, because his narrative rises and falls like the best dance singles. Bussy, founder of an avant-garde record label, covers the same milestones with a more cerebral style and with one great advantage: Hutter, Schneider, Fl r, and Bartos--notorious for their silence--granted Bussy interviews. The result: more specific explanations of artistic philosophies, recording processes, and the creative differences that caused Fl r and Bartos to quit in the mid-1980s. Both titles are essential for popular music collections. -- Heather McCormack, "Library Journal"