MusicQuake by Dimery Robert;

Author:Dimery, Robert;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quarto Publishing Group UK
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Kraftwerk’s definitive line-up (Karl Bartos, Ralf Hütter, Florian Schneider, Wolfgang Flür) look ahead

In 2019, Hütter described ‘Autobahn’ as a way of the band defining themselves as modern Germans. That meant swerving Anglo-American rock tropes and their country’s post-war conservatism (‘German society in the late 60s and 70s was still filled with figures from the Nazi era,’ Neu!’s Michael Rother told MOJO in 2009). Instead, they looked to early 20th-century avant-garde movements such as Futurism and the Bauhaus, as well as ground-breaking elektronische Musik produced by pioneers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Many music journalists lazily played on that post-war legacy when writing about German artists. In 1976, NME titled a review of their gig at London’s Roundhouse ‘Krautwerk: This is what your fathers fought to save you from’. The previous year, Creem’s Lester Bangs couldn’t resist asking Kraftwerk whether brain-implanted electrodes that could transmit thoughts to a loudspeaker might be ‘the final solution to the music problem’. The group’s response was to slyly subvert such stereotypes. Hütter impishly advised Bangs that the German mentality ‘is more advanced’. And Kraftwerk’s look? Short haircuts, suits and ties – robot-like German efficiency? ‘We knew our appearance was ironic, flirtatious, provocative,’ Flür told Uncut in 2019. Music, artwork, presentation, ideology: one coherent concept.

With the band’s 1977’s Trans-Europe Express, everyone from Bronx hip-hoppers to Mancunian post-punk artists picked up on Kraftwerk. It all started with ‘Autobahn’, though.

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