Organic electronics
The German band
that defined electronic music in the mid-seventies reaching the top of the
charts in the UK with the song Das Model
/ The Model in 1981, although it was published in 1978 as part of the
classic Mensch-Maschine Die album,
was starred in a retrospective at the MoMA in New York. Titled Kraftwerk - Retrospective 12345678,
sound and visual works of the German band were explored chronologically. Each
event featured live full performance of one of their albums along with 3D
visualizations and giving additional tracks revisited from their catalog.
The group emerged
from the meeting of Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider as students of the
Conservatory of Düsseldorf in 1970. In the beginning their sound included sounds
like flutes, electronic organs, synthesizers and electric violins. Influenced
by German experimental music and art scene by the time, their sound grew over their
first three albums from an improvisation including many traditional instruments
such as bass, guitar and drums, but with the distortion of their sound, in two
discs, Kraftwerk (1970) and Kraftwerk 2 (1972) almost entirely
instrumental. But by 1973 the band started to incorporate drum machine in
concert eventually publishing the Ralf
und Florian album (1973), with increased prominence of synthesizers and the
introduction of the vocoder. In 1974 came the next step, the last of the band with
the producer Konrad "Conny" Plank. Titled Autobahn (1974) is a breakthrough in their sound drawing on the
Minimoog. The album was a commercial success with what they could invest in
their own studio.
At that time came
on the scene graphic artist Emil Schult, who gave a new look on the covers of
their albums and contributed lyrics in the songs. Thus there came the
international tours and a new album, Radio-Activity
(1975). Along with the new members Karl Bartos and Wolfgang Flür, the band undertook
a frenetic activity in which widened the horizons of electronic music in a time
when the punk scene emerged with overwhelming force. But the success of
Kraftwerk was an international fact and thanks to their pop tunes away from the
avant-garde instrumental tracks they created in their early works. In 1977 they
published Trans-Europe Express including
a sixteen-track sequencer. Their technological steps were on par with the
creative ones, definitely, electronic pop was installed in the minds of the
public. The Man-Machine (1978) was
released and the domain of the sequencer by Kraftwerk definitely arrived, even leading
it to improvisation, sequence by sequence or mixing them. An avant-garde album
without forgetting the melodies, including their great classic Das Model, which hit # 1 in the United
Kingdom three years later, curiously in promoting their next album, Computer World (1981).
The year 1983 would bring the single Tour
de France, including sounds of bicycle chains and bikers breathing. But the
crisis of the group came after minor drummer Ralf Hütter and Flür difficulties
with the rest of the band, finishing in his departure after the album Electric Cafe (1986). Then, the band
changed their members continuously but they recorder no new themes until the
album Tour de France Soundtracks (2003) was published and now we’re waiting for
the new album they are working. The man machine is still drawing a new palette
of sounds.
KRAFTWERK. RETROSPECTIVE 12345678. Click here
KRAFTWERK VIDEOS. Click here
Text by Juan Carlos Romero
Photo courtesy of MoMA, Museum of Modern Arts of New York
All rights reserved