Ten Reasons I Love Kraftwerk

Ten Reasons I Love…KRAFTWERK

1.                  They invented all dance culture – Maybe a case of damning with faint praise, but four middle-class blokes from Düsseldorf managed to change the face of all popular music just by pissing about. Their innate sense of pop perfection combined with a classically-trained background meant they bought a symphonic sensibility to electronica, leaving behind their avant-garde roots and boiling down all their training to rhythm and melody. Kraftwerk were an LED in an age of valve amps and huge keyboards, and their influence pervaded new wave, the birth of house music and rave culture and even found itself bastardised as backing tracks for Stock, Aitken and Waterman’s Hit Factory. Nearly forty years after first getting together, Kraftwerk still stand head and shoulders above their imitators.

2.                  Their sense of humour – Germans aren’t noted for their sense of humour, but in their own way Kraftwerk were a wry, sarcastic bunch. Aside from the constant downplaying of their roles to make them appear mere operators for their electronic orchestra, they came up with songs like ‘Ananas Symphonie’ from third album Ralf Und Florian, which was a pastiche of Hawaiian hula music named after pineapples and came complete with plinky-plonky ukulele. Appearing on Italian telly, they forced an incandescent Julio Inglesias to get changed in a corridor after they were accidentally allocated his opulent dressing room. Convincing everyone they were robots was perhaps a step into the pretentious, but they found time to incorporate laddishness behind the plastic exterior – not content with getting chewed out by a German countess for leching at girls on their first tour of America, they changed the words of ‘The Model’ at a soundcheck to “now she’s a big success I’d like to fuck her again.” They don’t take themselves nearly as seriously as you would imagine.

3.                  They’re more entertaining doing nothing than Pete Doherty manages with every court appearance – Kraftwerk in their current incarnation don’t do interviews, or press, or tours, or albums. In fact, it appears they don’t do anything but drink coffee and cycle about the place a bit. But the mystery adds to the aura, which is the way they always wanted it. Their music and the band are strictly segregated and the fact that they don’t play two festivals a year, or even a decade, means that when they do venture out they make Howard Hughes appear as laid back as a hippie in a field full of home-grown.

4.                  They’re funky as hell – Electronic music, especially in the early days, was a hit and miss affair. As late as the mid-eighties, New Order were complaining that they had trouble keeping their sequencers in tune under stage lighting. Not only did Kraftwerk invent all their own stage equipment, they always wanted to take it a stage further so they could move around the stage. Pet Shop Boys came on stage and stood their like Thunderbirds puppets set into concrete; as early as 1976, Kraftwerk were pioneering a ‘drum cage’ so they could dance in time with their tunes. Dance pioneer Derrick May imagined his ‘Strings Of Life’ to be an approximation of “Kraftwerk and George Clinton trapped in a lift together.” That’s quite a compliment.

5.                  They’re one of the last gangs in town – There are only two original members of Kraftwerk left, Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider; in fact, they WERE the original members. In keeping with their original forty year old template, all members were dispensable, secondary to the music. They refused overtures by Michael Jackson and David Bowie to work with them at the height of their success. They cut out original drummer Wolfgang Flür at the start of the nineties and soon after dispensed with percussionist Karl Bartos, and have only released three albums since, including a live album. But this is no Axl Rose-style malaise; rather they don’t feel the need to rush material. Kraftwerk are aware of their place in musical history, and as such don’t need plaudits and awards to keep them happy.

6.                  They’ve never gone up their own arse – People might point to the obsessions with cycling, trains, cars and robots as a conscious decision to mystify critics, but this is a combination of a private sense of humour and a genuine love of subject matter. Kraftwerk have never been about social comment or technological advances – they found ways to make the music they wanted to make, and write songs about things they find enjoyable, and still find time to go clubbing even though they are nearing their sixties. They made concept albums without actually having anything to say.

7.                  Their inventiveness – It may seem unbelievable now, but at the time Kraftwerk moved into electronic music, there were literally a handful of synthesisers they could buy, including the already-obsolete Moog keyboard. Their first sequencer cost more than a top-of-the-range Volkswagen Beetle, and Wolfgang Flür built a drum machine from scratch using MDF and stainless steel off-cuts. Until the early nineties, when they had to upgrade their studio Kling Klang to digital, they made, recorded and toured with home-made equipment and as such should have at least won a barrage of design awards as well as musical acclaim.

8.                  They create perfect pop music – Kraftwerk were not always pioneers; they revered The Beach Boys and their breakthrough hit ‘Autobahn’ aped ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ with a play on words, “…wir fahr’n, fahr’n, fahr’n auf der autobahn…” All of their albums clock in at less than forty minutes and none of their songs outstay their welcome, and remarkably for a band that uses synthetic instrumentation, their albums can be listened to all the way through without you wanting to put your head through the floorboards in apathy.

9.                  They don’t give a shit about MySpace – Been there, done that. Back in 1981, they released Computer World, an homage to the home entertainment system we all know and love. At a time when a home computer cost more than some family homes (okay, in slum areas, granted), Kraftwerk had seen it, played with it, dissected it and spat it out. They don’t need to fall in love with a faster processor – they’re probably working on a concept album about space stations on bloody Jupiter that no-one else but them knows about.

10.              Their fashion sense – Think of Germany and invariably you’ll settle on two things – Lederhosen and drab green uniforms. Kraftwerk wore uniforms in a sense, but they were natty for the day. In their free-form days as proto-jazz artists Organisation, Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider had long hair and wore flares and brilliant white espadrilles. In 1975 that all changed, and the new Kraftwerk insisted on uniform dress, namely cut suits and ties. Loose trousers were banned, and all hair was short and styled. Before you complain of Nazi overtones, let me add that they were looking for fashions that would be good under disco lighting, and as such led the way for both New Romantics and the recent wave of indie bands. Franz Ferdinand owe them a huge debt.

The album you must own – The Man Machine (1978) The year Sex Pistols split, Kraftwerk released a concept album about robots and technology that has aged better than Never Mind The Bollocks… Containing solitary Number One ‘The Model,’ ‘The Man Machine’ has a delicacy and an economy hitherto unseen in German popular music, brilliant cover art influenced by Russian artist El Lissitzky, introduced the famous robots, and the title track builds so perfectly you’d think Deep Blue figured it out of an algorithm. Essential.

The under-rated album – The Mix (1991) Five years in the making, history has been unkind to this collection of updated Kraftwerk classics, mainly because the rave bubble had burst all over its day-glo face and the name of the game was earnest garage rock. Basically a reworking in digital of thirteen of their most popular tracks, it has an energy and inventiveness most groups would struggle to match, and the versions of ‘Autobahn’ and ‘Computer Love’ are far superior to the originals in their layers of sound.

The tricky album – Autobahn (1974) The album that garnered their first American hit, this has become famous for both the cover art and the title track, but with five songs with no real concept beyond trying something new, their free-form origins are still apparent. Chief culprit is ‘Morgenspaziergang’ (‘Morning Walk’), which twitters and meanders like they’ve just taken the packaging off their new Casio digital watches. The title track is not as exciting as Tomorrow’s World remembers it, either.

The album to avoid – Radioactivity (1975) There’s only one song worth hearing on this concept about old-time radio, with a vague link to the nuclear power industry. ‘Radioactivity’ is hardly a classic in itself, but it’s the equivalent of a Burt Bacharach tune compared to the random collection of blips and feedback designed to make it sound like you’re back in the 1930’s. The cover art was changed when their chosen radio was found to come complete with a Nazi insignia – they ought to have stopped there, really.

If you only own one track – ‘Tour De France’ (1983). This is available as a single or a bonus track on Tour De France Soundtracks (2003) and it still rocks. A three minute wonder and a theme tune for Channel Four to boot, this paean to the “cattle on bikes” (copyright A. Partridge) that inexplicably takes over a huge country every year combines kinetic energy, an infectious riff and manages to completely knacker you out by the end of it. Perfect for those high-intensity gym workouts.

Chris Stanley