Kraftwerk were around fifty years ahead of their time when they went from being an arty instrumental rock band from Düsseldorf to a man-machine band with their signature mix of synthesiser, drum machine and vocoder that can be heard on their hits We Are the Robots and Tour de France. Their transition started on the album Ralf und Florian in 1973 and culminated with Autobahn in 1974, the group’s fourth album which was produced in Conny Plank’s studio in Cologne, a legendary sound engineer who worked with the best of the German avant-garde of the era and the krautrock bands Can, Neu!, Cluster and Harmonia. After, Kraftwerk became famous worldwide as the Rhine musicians recorded classic after classic in their private studio Kling Klang, from Radio-Activity, Trans-Europe Express, and The Man-Machine up until Computer World in 1981.
So, why fifty years? Well that’s how long it took technology to catch up with Kraftwerk, who have decided against touring multiple times since the end of the ‘80s, and did a few shows here and there before making a comeback in the 2000’s with world tours in front of audiences wearing 3D glasses. Until now, it seems the live performances were a bit of a pain for the group of perfectionists led by Ralf Hütter (the only permanent member of a continuously changing combo, between the back and forth of his partner Florian Schneider and the departure of percussionist Karl Bartos at the end of the ‘80s). “The equipment is finally up to our standards”, said the leader of the group at the end of 2009 in one of his rare interviews for The Guardian. Hütter was fastidious and felt that the only way to hear Kraftwerk’s “real” sound was to practically move the Kling Klang on stage. In 1991, he was already making predictions in an interview with the famous British journalist Jon Savage, “I do think we’re in a new musical age. We’re in the middle of a revolution, there’s one phase already finished, Miniaturisation is continuing. Trans Europe Express was done with huge machinery, and all this smaller stuff, transportable computers, will be great. We’re still carrying a lot of weight from city to city. We’re dreaming of carrying a briefcase from place to place with a laptop, little samples and little keyboards.”
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