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05-06 Florian Schneider dies at 73
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» Add News | Kraftwerk
To label any band, of any time period or any genre, as 'the most influential band ever' is a ludicrous statement. Yet, it happens. Does anyone lay serious claim to such a crown? Well, through all the genres they either spawned or directly influenced - electro, hip-hop, ambient, techno, pretty much every form of electronic music, post-punk, industrial, avant-garde rock, synth pop, et cetera - Kraftwerk have credentials as good as anyone. Formed under the name Organization in 1968, they were initially a fairly standard Krautrock band, taking their cues from Romantic and 20th century orchestral ...read more
To label any band, of any time period or any genre, as 'the most influential band ever' is a ludicrous statement. Yet, it happens. Does anyone lay serious claim to such a crown? Well, through all the genres they either spawned or directly influenced - electro, hip-hop, ambient, techno, pretty much every form of electronic music, post-punk, industrial, avant-garde rock, synth pop, et cetera - Kraftwerk have credentials as good as anyone. Formed under the name Organization in 1968, they were initially a fairly standard Krautrock band, taking their cues from Romantic and 20th century orchestral music. They experiemented with electronic instruments,building upon the innovations of Silver Apples and several avant-garde composers, and changed their name to Kraftwerk (German for 'powerplant') to reflect this new direction. At this point, electronic music was seen as something far too arty and obscure to ever trouble the average person's listening. This all changed with Autobahn. Released in 1974, Autobahn represented a seismic shift for music. One review at the time asked, "It's good -but is it rock?"; the confusion of which tells us just how cutting-edge Autobahn was in popular music. It became a worldwide hit.In the wake of this, Kraftwerk became a far more conceptual band. Not only were they playing machines, they claimed -the machines were also playing them. This was highlighted by a press conference called by the band to promote their 1978 album, The Man-Machine - in one of popular music's most famous pranks, robots, designed to look like the members of the band, appeared in the place of the real members. It was both an ironic response to those who claimed that the band's'robot-pop' lacked humanity and could have written by machines, and a gentle mockery of the wider world's stereotype of Germans as efficient and cold.Since 1981's Computer World, which ended one of popular music's longest stretches of almost unbroken critical acceptance,the band have only toured and released new material very sporadically - the members claim that they still write music everyday, but that they do it for themselves only. Meanwhile, the band developed a somewhat unhealthy obsession with cycling,culminating in their last major release of original material, Tour De France Soundtracks. Nonetheless, they've found time to tour, which meant in 2005, we were treated to their first live album, Minimum-Maximum. « hide |
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