Kraftwerk: A Short History of The Band

The two main protagonists of Kraftwerk, Florian Schneider and Ralf Hutter, were originally trained as classical musicians but it was the technical efficiency of machines that really captured their imagination. They embraced new technology to create note-perfect tone-films where the sounds create mental images. Bowie and Eno were inspired by Kraftwerk's breakthrough album "Autobahn" in the mid seventies. The following album "Trans-Europe Express" featured the two tracks that became the foundation for Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock". A song that unleashed electro-funk and techno upon an unsuspecting world. Influencial ? You could say so. It could be claimed that Kraftwerk have bee the main influence in ever form of electronic music since the band started out, including dance, hip-hop, rock and pop.

It was the late-night radio station called "Rund-funk" that introduced the duo to the possibilites of constructing music from electronically manufactured sounds. Though the classical musicians in them held on to the importance of structure and form at the expense of emotion and interpretation - in other worlds composition was everything.

Their first release featured two drummers one of whom was Klaus Dinger who went on to form the band Neu! with Michael Rother. This debut wasn't limited to just electronica as Schneider played flute and Hutter the piano to augment the latest Vox and Farfisa organs, as well as the Arp Odyssey and the minimoog. On their second album, recorded in Dusseldorf at their expanding Kling Klang studio, the used a drum machine for the first time on record. This was 1971.

Then came their most influential record, "Autobahn". Having recorded a number of automobile noises the two main men set out to recreate the sounds using synthesizers. These auto sounds were set to a motorik rhythm, similar to those of Neu!, some travelogue words and some classic tunes and voila. They had pieced together a classic and evocative, if somewhat lengthy, tone-film. This was the summer of Bowie and Iggy Pop living in Berlin. A summer where they drove around all night listening to "Autobahn" with Bowie slowly morphing into a Teutonic modernist away from his glam soul boy past and towards three albums of electronic based music. Though it must be remembered that Bowie did use the sound of the synthesized train on "Station To Station".

In 1977 "Trans-Europe Express" was released. It melded textures and layers with unique rhythms. The source sounds for this album were recorded at the train station in Dusseldorf near to Kraftwerk's very own Kling Klang studios. The music evoke a feeling of moving on, of travelogue and again there were occasional words and melodies that seemed to float past as the journey passed through uniquely modern soundscapes.

"Showroom Dummies" drove home the image of the band. An image which slowly and sequentially changed as the music did. Uniform suits and haircuts, rebelling against the rebels (punk) and charged with the semiotics of the production line and uniformity.

The 1978 album "The Man-Machine" became the groups biggest international hit. The single "The Model" went to number one in Britain. What followed was an explosion of electronic based bands including Depeche Mode, Human League, Ultravox and OMD. All of which had break through records released. These new pretenders, although fine artists in their own right, could never match the warmth and fluidity created by Kraftwerk's electronic music.