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| Alias =
| Alias =
| Origin = [[Düsseldorf]], [[Germany]]
| Origin = [[Düsseldorf]], [[Germany]]
| Genre = [[Electronic music]]<br/>[[Electro music|Electro]], [[Krautrock]]
| Genre = [[Electronic music]]<br/>[[Krautrock]]
| Years_active = [[1970]]&ndash;present
| Years_active = [[1970]]&ndash;present
| Label = [[Kling Klang|Kling Klang Studio]]
| Label = [[Kling Klang|Kling Klang Studio]]

Revision as of 07:42, 14 October 2006

Kraftwerk

Kraftwerk (pronounced [ˈkʁaftvɛɐk], German for "power station") is a German musical group which has made significant contributions to the development of experimental and electronic music. The band was founded by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider-Esleben in 1970, but became widely known as a quartet consisting of Wolfgang Flür and Karl Bartos alongside the founding members.

The classic Kraftwerk sound combines driving electronic percussion and bass lines with catchy synthesized melodies and harmony, accompanied by simple lyrics sung through a vocoder. The sound was revolutionary for its time, and has had a lasting impact across nearly all genres of modern popular music. The band celebrated its 35th anniversary in 2005, and continues to tour. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

History

Kraftwerk was founded in 1970 by Florian Schneider-Esleben (flute) and Ralf Hütter (keyboards), the pair setting up their Kling Klang studio in Düsseldorf. The two had met as students at the Düsseldorf Conservatory in the late 1960s, participating in the experimental music scene of the time which the UK music press dubbed "Krautrock".

Early Kraftwerk line-ups (1970-1974) fluctuated, Hütter and Schneider working with around half a dozen other musicians over the course of recording four albums and sporadic live appearances - most notably guitarist Michael Rother and drummer Klaus Dinger, who left to form Neu!.

The input, expertise and influence of producer/engineer Konrad "Conny" Plank also was significant. Plank worked with many other leading German acts (including members of Can, Neu!, Cluster, Harmonia) and largely as a result of his work with Kraftwerk, Plank's studio near Cologne (Köln) became one of the most sought-after studios in the late 1970s. Plank produced the first four Kraftwerk albums but ceased working with them after the commercial success of Autobahn, apparently over a dispute about contracts.

Painter Emil Schult became a regular collaborator with the band beginning in 1973 (originally playing bass guitar and electric violin, then designing artwork, writing additional lyrics and accompanying them on tour).

File:TEE-E-front.jpg
Album cover of Trans-Europe Express (1977).

What is generally regarded as the classic Kraftwerk line-up formed in 1975, for the Autobahn tour. This saw the band presented as an electronic quartet, with Hütter and Schneider joined by Wolfgang Flür and Karl Bartos as electronic percussionists. This quartet would be the band's public persona for their renowned output of the latter 1970s and early 1980s. (Flür had joined the band in 1973 as a drummer, in preparation for a television appearance to promote their third album. This show saw the public debut of the group's striking self-built electronic percussion pads, played by Flür).

The band is notoriously reclusive, so much so that it is rumoured that their own record company does not have their phone numbers. Another notable example of their eccentric behavior was reported to Johnny Marr of The Smiths by Karl Bartos, who explained that anyone trying to contact the band for collaboration would be told the studio telephone did not have a ringer, as during recording the band did not like to hear any kind of noise pollution. Instead, callers were instructed to phone the studio at a certain time on the dot, whereupon the phone would be answered by Ralf Hütter, despite himself never hearing the phone ring. Hütter: "The telephone is an antiquity — you never know who is calling, there is no image, it is an outmoded product which constantly disrupts work." (interviewed in Liberation, 1991)

File:E2000-Df.jpg
Cover of Expo 2000 (1999).

After years of withdrawal from live performance, Kraftwerk began to tour again more regularly from the late 1990s onward. Hütter had wanted to play more shows over the years, but shipping all their huge, analog equipment hindered world tours and travel outside of Europe. During this decade, the band often stated they were working on new material — though speculation about release dates fell through several times. The growing time between recordings, the rarity of live performances and the increasingly exacting and protracted nature of the recording process were the major reasons behind the departure of Flür and especially Bartos, whose improvisations were an essential part of the earlier Kraftwerk recordings. Following the departure of Flür and Bartos, various Kling Klang studio personnel such as Fritz Hilpert and Henning Schmitz have appeared in the Kraftwerk line-up.

A Web site, www.kraftwerk.com appeared in November 1996, with further development work occurring since 1999 and the resumption of audio releases by the group. Like the parallel releases of both German and English language recordings, the Web site now is accessible with either international (.com) or German (.de) locators. There also has been a separate merchandise site www.klingklang.com since Kraftwerk gained control of that domain name from a previous owner.

In late summer 1999 the original recordings of "Tour de France" finally were released on CD, signalling the resumption of public activity.

The single Expo 2000, their first new song in 13 years, was released in December 1999 and subsequently was remixed by contemporary electronica musicians such as Orbital.

File:Kraftwerk drumpads small.jpg
The electronic drum pads in use during a performance in 1975.

In 2000, ex-member Flür published his autobiography in Germany, Kraftwerk: I Was a Robot, which revealed many previously unreported details about life in the band. This book met with hostility and litigation from Hütter/Schneider, who disputed several of its claims (e.g. that Flür had built the band's first electronic drum pads) and objected to the public discussion of personal information.

In August 2003, the band finally released Tour de France Soundtracks, their first album of new material since 1986's Electric Café.

June 2005 saw the release of a live album, Minimum-Maximum, which was compiled from the shows on the band's European tour of spring 2004 and received extremely positive reviews. Most of the tracks featured had been heavily reworked and remodeled from the existing studio versions. The album was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album. Released with the album was a Minimum-Maximum DVD, featuring live footage of the band performing the Minimum-Maximum tracks in various venues all over the world.


File:A74-D-front.jpg
Album cover of Autobahn (1974).

Music

Though most famous for their electronic albums, Kraftwerk began as a Krautrock jam band in the vein of Can or Neu!. Their first three albums were more free-form experimental rock, without the pop hooks or more disciplined strong structure of their later work. Kraftwerk, released in 1970, and Kraftwerk 2, released in 1972, were mostly exploratory jam music, played on a variety of traditional instruments including guitar, bass, electric organ, flute and violin. Post-production modifications to these recordings were then used to distort the sound of the instruments, particularly audio tape manipulation and multiple dubbings of one instrument on the same track. Both albums are purely instrumental.

With Ralf and Florian, released in 1973, the band began to move closer to its "classic" sound, relying more heavily on synthesizers and drum machines. Although almost entirely instrumental, the album marks Kraftwerk's first use of the vocoder, which would in time become one of their musical signatures.

Their breakthrough, both musically and popularly, came in (1974) with the Autobahn album and its 22-minute title track featuring the "motorik" beat (you can hear a sample on the album's page), which was a worldwide hit and demonstrated their increasing reliance on synthesizers and electronics. This preceded a trio of albums that would exert a huge influence on popular music — Radio-Activity (1975), Trans-Europe Express (1977) and the seminal The Man-Machine (1978).

Kraftwerk's lyrics deal with postwar European urban life and technology — traveling by car on the Autobahn, traveling by train, using home computers and the like. The lyrics usually are very minimal but reveal both an innocent celebration of, and a knowing caution about, the modern world, as well as playing an integral role in the rhythmic structure of the songs. Many of Kraftwerk's songs express the paradoxical nature of modern urban life — a strong sense of alienation existing side-by-side with a celebration of the joys of modern technology.

Kraftwerk were one of the first "pop" acts to record using pure electronic (or electronically processed) instruments and sounds exclusively. Many of the vocals in Kraftwerk songs are processed through a vocoder, or generated using speech synthesis software — in addition a Texas Instruments Language Translator was used to generate synthetic speech on their 1981 album Computer World - not a Speak and Spell as is commonly believed. [1], [2] They also pioneered the use of backing tracks that were generated by the electronic sequencing of purely synthetic sounds.

Notably, all of their albums from Radio-activity onwards have been recorded in separate versions; one with German vocals for sale in Germany, and one with English vocals for international sale, with occasional other language variations when conceptually appropriate. The single "Tour de France" featured lyrics in French (as does the 2003 album Tour de France Soundtracks). The German language versions are Kraftwerk's attempt to provide an alternative to the dominant Anglo–American influence in rock and pop music:

So you see another group, like Tangerine Dream, although they are German they have an English name, so they create onstage an Anglo–American identity, which we completely deny. We want the whole world to know that we are from Germany, because the German mentality — which is more advanced — will always be part of our behavior. We create out of the German language, the mother language, which is very mechanical; we use it as the basic structure of our music.

— Ralf Hütter

The 1986 song, Das Modell was covered and sung by German band Rammstein which turned it into an industrial genre song. It was released as a single along with remixes by Clawfinger and the song 'Kokain' (Cocaine) in 2003. [3]

Live shows

Live performance always has played an important part in Kraftwerk's activities. Also, despite their live shows generally being based around formal songs and compositions, live improvisation often plays a noticeable role in their performances. This trait can be traced back to the group's roots in the experimental krautrock scene of the late 1960s, but significantly, it has continued to be a part of their playing even as they make ever greater use of digital and computer-controlled sequencing in their performances. Some of the band's familiar compositions have been observed to have developed from live improvisations at their concerts or sound-checks.

Early gigs (1970–1974)

An early Kraftwerk album

Early in the group's career, between 1970 and 1974, the group made sporadic live appearances, mostly in their native Germany, with a variety of line-ups. A few of these performances were for television broadcasts. The only constant figure in these line-ups was Schneider, whose main instrument at the time was the flute but who also played violin and guitar, processed through a varied array of electronic effects. Hütter (who left the band for six months in 1971) played electronic keyboards (including Farfisa organ and electric piano). At least some of their performances were made as a duo, using a simple "beatbox"-type electronic drum machine with preset rhythms (taken from an electric organ). Various other musicians who appeared on stage as part of the group during these years included Klaus Dinger (acoustic drums), Andreas Hohmann (acoustic drums), Michael Rother (electric guitar), Charlie Weiss (drums), Eberhard Kranemann (bass guitar), Plato Kostic (bass guitar), Emil Schult (electric violin, electric guitar), Klaus Roeder (electric violin, electric guitar) and Wolfgang Flür (electronic percussion).

Documentation of this period in the group's history is sparse, with Hütter and Schneider not keen to talk about it in interviews. A few bootleg recordings are in circulation. The only official released material is their 1971 performance on the German Beat Club TV show, which is available on DVD.

Tours with the 'electronic quartet' line-up (1975–1981)

1975 saw a turning point in Kraftwerk's live shows. For the first time, with financial support from their record company, they were able to undertake a multi-date "tour" (to promote the Autobahn album). This tour took them across the Atlantic to the USA for the first time. The tour also saw a new, stable, live line-up, in the form of an "electronic quartet". Hütter and Schneider both mainly played keyboard parts on synthesizers such as the MiniMoog and ARP Odyssey, with Schneider's use of flute diminishing. The two of them also sang vocals on stage for the first time, with Schneider also using a vocoder live. Wolfgang Flür and new recruit Karl Bartos performed live electronic percussion using custom-made (and at the time, unique) sensor pads hit with metal sticks to complete a circuit and trigger analog synthetic percussion circuits (initially cannibalized from the aforementioned organ beatbox). Bartos also used a vibraphone/Glockenspiel instrument.

Between 1975 and 1981, Kraftwerk toured regularly to accompany each of their album releases (the exception being for The Man-Machine), with the same Hütter-Schneider-Bartos-Flür line-up. Emil Schult generally fulfilled the role of tour manager. As this period progressed, the band's set focussed increasingly on song-based material, with vocals, using less acoustic instrumentation (flute, vibraphone) and increasing amounts of sequenced and automaticed electronic equipment for percussion and musical lines. Their approach generally was to use the sequencing equipment interactively, however, allowing them still to improvise. Flür was heavily involved in designing customized modular housing and packaging for their equipment, culminating in the Computer World tour of 1981, where the band effectively packed up their entire Kling Klang studio and took it on the road with them. The band also developed an increasing use of visual elements in the live shows during this period. This included back-projected slides and films, increasingly synchronized with the music as the technology developed, an experimental light-beam activated "drum cage" allowing Flür to trigger electronic percussion through arm gestures, use of hand-held miniaturized instruments during the set, and perhaps most famously, the use of accurate replica mannequins of themselves to 'perform' onstage in the song "The Robots".

Several bootleg recordings of this period have been widely available, some even in major retail stores, particularly from the Autobahn and Computer World tours.

1990s and beyond

File:20040323-kraftwerk-in-de-ab-03-the-man-machine.jpg
Kraftwerk in performance, 2004.

The completion of the 1981 Computer World tour then saw almost a decade-long hiatus in Kraftwerk's live activities. They did not perform again until 1990, by which time Flür had left the band three years earlier in 1987. The next proper tour was in 1991, for the album The Mix. By this time, Bartos also had left the line-up. Hütter and Schneider wished to continue the "electronic quartet" style of presentation, and recruited engineers Fritz Hilpert and, initially, Portuguese Fernando Abrantes, soon replaced by Henning Schmitz, to take to the stage with them.

From this point, the band's equipment increasingly deprecated manual playing, replacing it with interactive control of sequencing equipment. Hütter retains the most manual performance, still playing selected musical lines by hand on a controller keyboard, and singing live vocals. Much of Schneider's live vocoding has been replaced by software-controlled speech-synthesis techniques. By 2002, the band were touring using four laptop computers, running all their sequencing, sound generating and visual display software. Back-projected computer-generated video, synchronized with the songs, was an increasingly integral component of the show. The band also continued to develop their "robots", which by now featured computer-controlled mechanical pivoting limbs, allowing them to "dance".

The increased availability and sophistication of portable digital recording equipment means that bootlegs from this period are numerous, despite the band's efforts to prevent such recordings. In 2005, the band released their first official live album, Minimum-Maximum, recorded on their 2004 tour.

A DVD of their 2004 world tour, Minimum-Maximum (DVD) also is available.

Discography

Albums

Miscellaneous albums

Non-album releases

Popular culture

In the episode Raging Abe Simpson and His Grumbling Grandson in "The Curse of the Flying Hellfish" from the seventh season of the Simpsons, some paintings are returned to Baron von Wortzenberger who says, "Ja ja ja, mach schnell mit der art things, huh? I must get back to Dancecentrum in Stuttgart in time to see Kraftwerk."

In the movie The Big Lebowski there is a group of nihilists who had a band called "Autobahn" (refering to the Kraftwerk song of the same name). The record sleeve shown briefly mimics the style of Kraftwerk, especially the look of the band members.

The song Ruckzuck off the Kraftwerk album was the theme song to the American PBS show Newton's Apple.

The title track off the album Electric Café was remixed and used as the theme song for Sprockets, a recurring sketch on the American sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live.

External links

Official sites

Fansites and mailing lists

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Category:Kraftwerk.

Other

Notes

  1. ^ The Guardian, Desperately seeking Kraftwerk
  2. ^ NME, Kraftwerk : Minimum-Maximum Live
  3. ^ John McCready on Kraftwerk
  4. ^ Harrington, Richard (Friday, May 27, 2005). "These Days, Kraftwerk Is Packing Light". washington post. p. WE08. Retrieved 2006-07-06. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ Gill, Andy (April 1997). "KRAFTWERK: Do the men play machines? Or the machines play the men? How four humanoids with one vision revolutionised pop". Mojo. Retrieved 2006-07-06.


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