I’m The Operator with my Pocket Calculator
The story of Kraftwerk, pioneers and a major influence in modern electronic music…

“The mechanical universe of Kraftwerk has been cloned or copied in Detroit, Brussels, Milan, Manchester, and even psychedelicised by the delirium of house music. You can define it as you want; sci-fi music, techno-disco, cybernetic rock, but the term I prefer even so is robot pop. It fits in with our objective which consists of working without respite toward the construction of the perfect pop song for the tribes of the global village” Ralf Hutter

The three most influential bands to come out of Germany, hands down, are: Can, Tangerine Dream, and Kraftwerk. On any given day, I may throw Amon Duul into the mix, but for the most part, the three mentioned above really paved the way and set the standards for German music, as well as psychedelic music in general. Those of you who regularly read this column are aware of my love for Can and have read me rant about them ad nauseum. This month, I want to focus on Kraftwerk, a band that has influenced every, (even those bands who don’t openly admit it) electronic band that has appeared since the late 1970s. Bands and musicians like Devo, The Human League, Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, Spiritualized, The Orb, Spaceman 3, Orbital, Tubeway Army, all have Kraftwerk to thank for helping forge the path of electronic music into the mainstream.

Being the German history geek that I am (please just let me pretend to use my BA for something useful), I feel the need to paint a little bit of a picture of post-WWII Germany. The situation was pretty bleak as far as music was concerned. Being stuck in the cold war between East and West Germany left a sort of musical void. Many German bands were really just bad cover bands, playing the hits that were invading the United States and Britain. Although the situation seemed pretty bad, there was a strong desire to recapture a sense of German identity. This growing desire produced a wave of new music and film. A strong trend in much of the German music of this period was its unusualness, its tripiness, craziness, brashness, which can be identified as a coming to terms with the war and with the reality of life in Germany following it.

Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider-Esleben met at the Kunstakademie (Academy of Arts) outside of Dusseldorf. Both men were classically trained musicians who studied at the Dusseldorf Conservatory. Upon meeting, they formed their first group, Organisation, whose music is reminiscent of performance art, a strange mixture of sounds, feedback and rhythms, performed mainly in art galleries, cafes, and universities. Simultaneously, Karlheinz Stockhausen, who many consider the father of German experimental music, was making a name for himself and generating a lot of interest in the German music scene. Many musicians in this scene considered themselves to be serious artists using their music as their medium for expressing their artistic statements. In 1970 Ralf and Florian recorded an album as Organisation. The band consisted of Florian on flute and violin, Ralf on organ, Fred Monics on drums, Basil Hammoudi on vocals, and Butch Hauf on bass. The album, Tone-Float, featured a side long piece on side one, and four songs on side two, was only released in Germany and failed to sell many copies.

In 1971 Ralf and Florian, aided by Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother (both went on to form the band Neu!), and with Eberhardt Krahnemann on bass, released the self-titled album, Kraftwerk, (aka Kraftwerk 1). Kraftwerk 1 and the following album Kraftwerk 2 were very successful and featured very long, experimental songs. The songs are complex experimentations with different sounds, and recording tools, equipment, noise and rhythm.

In 1977, Kraftwerk had their biggest success with the album, Trans European Express. It was at this point that their music really seemed to catch on in the United States and the band’s entire back catalogue was re-issued in the United States. In the period in between Kraftwerk 2 and Trans European Express, the band toured and played festivals featuring other German bands like Can, Ash Ra Tempel, and Tangerine Dream. Florian met up with an electric-violinist, Emil Schult, who began to sit in and contribute to Ralf and Florian’s jam sessions. Ralf and Florian also released a recording called, Ralf und Florian. The album displayed much of the trademark sounds that would be prevalent on the duo’s later Kraftwerk albums. Like Kraftwerk 1 and 2, this album did have long, experimental songs, but there is also a progression to a more structured song style and sound. Ralf and Florian went on through the late 1970s and early 1980s creating more Kraftwerk albums. Kraftwerk 3 (known as the album with the orange highway cones on it) contains what is probably the band’s best-known song, Autobahn. Later albums contain such gems as: Pocket Calculator, Computerlove, Radioactivity, Metal on Metal, Homecomputer, and the Robots (most of these songs are found on albums of the same name).

The predominant theme of computers, machinery, and metal is a good analogy to what Kraftwerk’s music sounds like. When asked to describe Kraftwerk’s sound, I often tell people to imagine what it would be like to have calculus sing and make music. It may be a rather vague or abstract idea, but when ever I listen to Kraftwerk all I can think of is mathematics and robotics. It is almost like listening to the inside of a robot, or your computer, or many robots working together (like in an auto factory) and interpreting those sounds as music. Contemporary bands like Orbital, The Orb, Aphex Twin and even bands like Depeche Mode, whose early music was heavily electronic based, have Kraftwerk to thank for forging the electronic/experimental pathway and bringing “beautiful noise” into the mainstream.