During the 1970s and early 1980s in New York City, USA something groundbreaking was growing and spreading in the burgeoning DJ scene—hip hop. Like nowhere else in the world, artists like DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa and his Zulu Nation, were bringing a totally new sound to the NYC underground and in effect creating one of the largest music industries ever cut to tape.
Bambaataa in particular is known for his deep use of various genres and a lengthy career creating culture and community from music. In the early 1980s, Bambaataa and his cohort were running an event space in the Bronx, the Bronx River Center. Considered a hub for the most cutting edge DJ performances and hotspot for the black and Latino community and “newwavers” alike in NYC, the 200 cap room would be the deck that mixed the some of the biggest trends in the scene most importantly the coupling between the new genre and another maverick wave—electronic music.
It was at the Bronx River Center where Bambaataa began sketching one of his biggest hits, “Planet Rock” (the first serious recording of the Roland 808 drum machine), lighting the room up with a track from a band seemingly on the opposite side of the globe. That track was “Trans Europe Express,” an electro-minimalist composition about modern European transportation by the German electronic band Kraftwerk.
Well on their way to becoming one of the most influential bands of all time, sharing a pedestal with The Beatles, the fully electronic German outfit was doing something quite similar to Bambaataa across the Atlantic: reinventing music.
Power Station
Afrika Bambaataa, Arthur Baker, and John Robie changed the future of music with their song “Planet Rock”, which sampled both Trans-Europe Express and Computer World, and joined a list of other revolutionary artists who were inspired by the groovy, future-thinking robot music from one of the 20th century’s greatest groups—Kraftwerk.
Kraftwerk, which translates to “power station”, is a band from the future that has been active since the 1960s. They set out to create a band for the modern world, reinventing the “working man” trope as the robotic workers for the future music using electronics to create some of the most legendary electronic music, setting the world’s imagination ablaze with their use of synthesizers, drum machines, an intense obsession with visual art, and uncompromising individuality.
The new musicians of the modern age, Kraftwerk have always been on the cutting edge of the craft and with their iconic think tank Kling Klang Studios, alongside their early collaboration with Germany’s genius producer Konrad “Conny” Plank and Krautrock stalwarts Konrad Schnitzler, Dieter Moebius, Edgar Froese, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, and more, the group has brought their unique sound from the art salons of Dusseldorf Germany to the most prestigious stages all over the world.
Kraftwerk captured the attention of the world with hits like the US chart topper “Autobahn” from the band’s legendary 1974 Autobahn, “The Robots” from the band’s 1978 aesthetic manifesto The Man-Machine, the voltage controlled ear-worm “Pocket Computer” from the band’s 1981 boundary pushing electronic pop classic Computer World, 1973’s uncompromisingly pleasant transitional album Ralf und Florian, or the band’s influential and still relevant early discography Kraftwerk 1 + 2.
Their live performances are not rivaled, Kraftwerk puts all of their energy into their live performances and have brought the most innovative and interactive electronic music experiences to audiences throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Kraftwerk was inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of fame in 2021 and has influenced some of the greatest music artists of our time personally, making them one of the most cherished and sampled bands ever.
From being named checked in David Bowie’s “V-2 Schneider”, sampled in Coldplay’s song “Talk”, or celebrated by a diverse cast of icons ranging from Ye and Miley Cyrus, to Gary Numan and The Human League, Kraftwerk have tuned a massively successful music machine from the imagination of the band’s eponymous co-creators Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider.
The story of the world’s first electronic band is like no other.
A Young Future
To understand the story of Kraftwerk we need to go back to mid-1960s Germany, the birth of Krautrock, and the radical youth art movement of post-war, metropolitan Europe.
The sixties was a decade of change all around the globe. Mired in the crossfade of old world politics and new world hope, young people across the planet were looking for new ways to leave the mechanics of world war in the past and find a future they could believe in. In Germany, some twenty years after world war two, the country is more than ready to replace the final vestiges of a world in the grip of conflict with a culture that values innovation in the arts and humanities, with a focus on an educated people who value community, creativity, and international collaboration.
The heart of this new cultural shift resided in two cities—the easterly Berlin and Dusseldorf, which sits Berlin’s opposite on the west side of the country. Both cities are known for their contributions to art, fashion, and modern thought. Berlin, which has been around since the 13th Century, is home to some of Germany’s most culturally sacred sites and was the hub of the age of enlightenment.
Dusseldorf holds a similarly prestigious sentiment. In the 1960s, Dusseldorf was home to innovations in fashion and modern experimental art. The experimental wave would be responsible for the birth of the “Krautrock” movement and from the scene would rise one of Germany’s greatest gifts, the friendship between two unrivaled dynamos, Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider.
Kindred Spirits in the Machine
Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider met as two young hoch bourgeoisie (affluent German upbringing) attending a music school in Dusseldorf—it was here where they would become life-long friends and merge their love for music and avant garde thinking to begin one the greatest collaborations in modern history.
Both Ralf and Florian brought their own flavor to the partnership. Ralf grew up playing piano and was interested in music composition, with an ear for the idiosyncrasies of pop music. Florian was fascinated by electronics, and grew up on musique concrète, idolized Pierre Henry, and was fluent in “loudspeakers, echo machines, and sound synthesis" (The Ambient Century, Pendergast, 2001).
The two would flourish in the burgeoning psychedelic, experimental, electronic-tinged soundscape which had taken root in Dusseldorf. The scene would eventually be dubbed "Krautrock" in the early 1970s, but what started as a quest for a new voice and sound, would become a historic offering to modern rock and electronic music. Bands like Can, Popol Vuh, and Kluster were on the forefront of keys inclusive psych-experimental music and would join Tangerine Dream and a litany of other electronics inclined composers in one of Germany’s key musical obsessions—the synthesizer.
Tools for a New Future
Evident in the films of Werner Herrzog and the beautiful scores by Tangerine Dream, German electronic music was everywhere and spreading fast.
Thanks to the trail blazing work of Karlheinz Stockhausen, his vanguard electronic tape compositions, and his fundamental work at the famous Cologne studio, WDR Studio für Elektronische Musik in the 1950s, the value of the circuit to the historied music culture was almost immediately understood.
Stockhausen was a hero and subject at The Robert Schumann Hochschule, a conservatory in Dusseldorf where Kraftwerk would meet and was hot in the minds of these young artists as they were dreaming a new music.
The Best Track Forward
Ralf and Florian’s first band, Organization, was an early success. Like Tangerine Dream’s Meditation, the spaced out flute and organ record was using signal processing as an instrument to great effect. Although the sound would land closer to the freak-kraut group Kluster. The duo would do well around the Dusseldorf art scene, specifically at the Krautrock incubator and west German conduit to the wider world of experimental music—Zodiak Free Arts Lab.
The Zodiak Free Arts Lab was a short lived but star studded venue in Dusseldorf run by Conrad Schnitzler, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Boris Schaak. The stage would help launch Krautrock to fame with Schnitzler and Roedelius of Tangerine Dream and Kluster fame curating the most necessary sounds from the youth movement of the late 1960s.
Reinforced by the masterful production instincts of the unbelievably versatile Conny Plank, whose affinity for the harsh set modern music on a new course, Krautrock quickly bloomed into really any direction a single artist could dream—a call that Ralf and Florian took seriously enough and Kraftwerk was born.
Another New Beginning
The earliest Kraftwerk albums were pure experimentation and while the directions explored on the flute driven Krautrock proper releases Kraftwerk 1 (1970), Kraftwerk 2 (1973), both released on Vertigo/Phillips Records from early sessions with Conny Plank in Cologne, and their great portal to their final form Ralf and Florian (1974), released on Phillips Records, the band’s first record with sessions from their new Kling Klang Studios, were valuable, the band was still searching for their voice.
It would be when Ralf and Florian teamed up with their legendary drummer Wolfgang Flür, for their fourth album Autobahn (1975), also on Phillips Records, all the perfect angles of Germany’s open-ended electronic puzzle box seemed to align.
Autobahn is Kraftwerk’s first solely electronic record and coincidentally their final collaboration with Conny Plank, who worked on every Kraftwerk release prior and is instrumental in the core sound of the band.
Commercially, Autobahn was Kraftwerk’s most successful album—peaking at no. 5 on the US billboard 200, and reaching no. 5 on the UK charts, all within a year of its release. Making a notable splash in the US, a market that original Krautrock ideation considered very rarely, would be key in the band’s expansion and canonization.
All accolades of course necessary ROI on some of the most inspired studio time in music to date.
The Right Stuff
Wielding an array of production supermen and cutting edge and custom made electronic instruments, Kraftwerk was able to gestate their first affect-filtered, monotonous, minimalist, electronic pop jewel. The band’s addition of Flür coincided with the implementation of the band’s newest electronic aces—two customized drum machines,a Farfisa Rhythm Unit 10 and a Vox Percussion King triggered by individual drum pads which Flür could perform on, similar to a physical drum set.
While bands of the time would rely on presets for minimal percussion accompaniment, Kraftwerk took the device a step further by bringing a new performance aspect, designed to get the most out of a human drummer. In this way, Kraftwerk was able to cultivate their totally unique and trend setting rhythmic sound.
Alongside the custom drum machines and the band’s Minimoog, Conny Plank’s extreme use of the classic “Krautrock phaser” would bring the final layer to Kraftwerk’s quicksilver. Known for his heavy use of phasers, Plank employed two essential pieces of phaser kit, the Mu-tron Bi-phase and a Schulte Compact Phasing ‘A’, the Schulte device had become affectionately dubbed the Krautrock Phaser thanks to extensive use across the Krautrock discography. After this key input, and production by Conny Plank, Autobahn was ready for the world.
Kraftwerk would expand yet again in 1975 with the addition of Robert Schumann alum and classical percussionist, Karl Bartos. Bartos would join Flür as the second drummer of the band and would bring with him an intense love for electronic instruments, the early 16 step Synthanorma sequencer, and Kling Klang’s synthesizer arsenal which included a Moog Minimoog, Moog Polymoog, ARP Odyssey, ARP 2600, Korg PS-3100, Vako Orchestron, and more over the years.
As a quartet, Kraftwerk was ready to take the world by storm and by 1975 the band was truly in its most authentic and tour ready shape. With the release of Radio-Activity in 1975, Kraftwerk was now fully in on their iconic persona—experimenting with the romanticization of people, places, and modern fears and dreams.
Poster Band for the Future
From their first performance on the German TV program Rockpalast in 1970 to their most recent tours, Kraftwerk has never shied away from taking the audience out of their comfort zone for the sake of pursuing their vision.
Over the arch of the band’s career they have continued to ask more of the technology around them to bring the world their brand of electro-pop. While early performances from the band depended on their futuristic staging—which would often only include a single pedestal per player, bewildering audiences with their minimal instrumentation, not to mention the lack of guitars or drums(!)—their more recent concerts have gone for large production scale as well as emotional.
In 2022 Kraftwerk would embark on their 3D Tour, which included 3D glasses with ticket purchase. The resulting experience added an unprecedented visual aspect to their classic catalog—engaging fans new and old by bridging generational gaps with the wonder of light.
Most recently the band did a nine-night run to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Autobahn at the iconic Walt Disney Music Hall in Los Angeles USA. The relatively young mid-sized venue was designed by architect Frank Gehry and brings to mind Iannis Xenakis’s Phillips Pavillion from the 1958 Brussels World's Fair, one of electronic music’s most important venues.
While touring Computer World, Kraftwerk worked with Casio to release a musical calculator. Kraftwerk used a Casio fx-501P programmable calculator on the song “Pocket Calculator”, a song which was rerecorded by the band in Japanese, French, Italian, and of course German. In a move of pop-genius the Kraftwerk and Casio partnership would go a step further with the custom “Kraftwerk taschenrechner”, based on the Casio VL-80, it even came with sheet music (calculator tabs) for a handful of their biggest hits.
Now a decade after the birth of the band, the Kraftwerk aura was at full effect all over the world—as evidenced by their accumulation of hit songs and futuristic live experiences and ephemera.
The Kraftwerk image was tempered in the studio throughout the 1970s, one of the true golden ages, an inspired moment from a list of inspired moments in the band’s story.
Tuning Kraftwerk
In 1978 the band released The Man-Machine, a follow up to their prolifically sampled Trans Europe Express (1977), and set a new standard for the band’s technical repertoire.
Trans Europe Express was a concept album in a way that only Kraftwerk would. Based on experiences traveling as a band by train, the Capitol record release would feature all four in 1930’s garb and be the first Kraftwerk album produced outside of Europe, mixed in Los Angeles. Featuring the best synthesizer production yet, it is one of the most sampled electronic records of all time.
However, with The Man-Machine, Kraftwerk would return to Kling Klang. The 1978 album is considered extremely influential on the British electronic and techno music scene and featured a new balance of mechanical statements and synthesized futurism. Between ambient synthesized flutes and the extensive use of vocoder, the album represents a new pinnacle for the band’s sound.
Ironically, the album was not toured on very extensively; the shows for Man-Machine were few and featured mannequin dummies which would take the place of the quartet throughout the set. The late '70s would lay the roses for the techno-pop conclusion of Kraftwerk’s proper run as a band.
“Business, Numbers, Money, People”
Like the rest of the commercial world, the 1980s were good years for electronic music. More synths, more listeners, more tech—Kraftwerk were ready to make good on their promise:
“We are the robots.”
In 1981 Kraftwerk released Computer World on their own label Kling Klang, the result of an intense digitizing of the Dusseldorf studio, thanks to the massive success of Kraftwerk’s previous albums.
Where The Man-Machine inspired the roots of British electronic music, Computer World inspired American musicians across the country. Some key ingredients in Bambaataa and The Soulsonic Force’s ‘Planet Rock’ are sampled from this album. A Number Of Names sampled "It’s More Fun To Compute" for "Sharevari" (Capriccio Records, 1981), setting Detroit’s “generation ecstasy” on fire.
The Computer World wave was not reserved for any one area and has popped up across electronic, techno, house, NY house, IDM, acid, and more until today with an ID list including: Aphex Twin’s "Mental Telepathy" (2015); Thomas Brinkmann, "1234567" (Max Ernst, 2002); DJ Shadow "What Does Your Soul Look Like Pt. 4", (Mo’ Wax, 1994); The KLF "What Time Is Love? (Live At Trancentral)", (1990); DJ Doktor Megatrip (Psychic TV) "Joy", (1988); WestBam "Monkey Say, Monkey Do", (1988); Todd Terry "Bango (To The Batmobile)", (Fresh Records, 1988); LCD Soundsystem "Disco Infiltrator", (DFA, 2005); Traxman "Computer Getto", Da Mind Of Traxman Vol 2 (Planet Mu, 2014); and more.
Finding a New Way
The abundance of technology in the 1980s would also be a trap for the band as the perfectionist, isolationist mandates of Ralf and Florian’s Kling Klang Studios would lead to endless reworkings of old songs, programming new digital synthesizers and incorporating the studio’s new New England Digital Corporation Synclavier.
In Mark Prendergast’s The Ambient Century, he notes “Karl Bartos remembers two years literally spent programming a new Yamaha DX7 synthesizer.”
It would be the beginning of the end of the band as it had been known for the most recent previous ten years of the band’s 30+ year span. In 1990, Bartos and Flür would part ways with Kraftwerk, starting the latter half of Kraftwerk's life cycle, which has been primarily focused on live performances and touring.
Kraftwerk supported U2 in 1992 for a protest in Manchester against nuclear waste disposal, performed as a surprise at the 1997 Tribal Gathering rave in Luton, and featured at Sonar ‘98 in Barcelona—Kraftwerk would close out the millennium with tours in the US and Japan.
Florian Schneider passed away at 73 in 2020, but the band still exists in its own way. At this stage Kraftwerk is reaping the rewards of their lifetime contribution to music, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award on top of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame recognition. Their music is more accessible than ever, remastered and available everywhere.
With modern music publishing, the band that made such an impact through the LP is now as relevant as ever. From Ralf and Florian’s Tone Float to 1991’s fun-focused electro-pop The Mix, the reverberation of Kraftwerk and the two men who plugged it in is one of humanity’s joyful noises.
