Emerging in the 1970s as forefathers of contemporary electronic pop music, Kraftwerk is an electronic multimedia project whose total combination of music, performance, and visuals expresses the essence of the present technological age—motorways, robots, nuclear anxiety and computer-driven lives.
Read MoreRalf Hütter, Henning Schmitz, Fritz Hilpert, and Falk Grieffenhagen now make up the internationally touring four electronic quartet that is Kraftwerk.
Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider were the band's original founders. Meeting at Akademie Remscheid near Düsseldorf in 1968, where the pair were studying classical music, they found common interest in cutting edge electronics, The Velvet Underground, and provocative happenings instigated by FLUXUS in Germany.
In 1970 Hütter and Schneider founded Klang Studio and began the Kraftwerk project. Taking the German word for 'power station', the band's name was indicative of its German-centric industrial aesthetic and infusion of electric energy.
Over the following decades the band generated a hard-edged futuristic sound using synthesisers, sequencers, rhythm machine, and vocoders, accompanied by poetic lyrics delivered in a half-spoken deadpan manner with programmed synthetic voices.
A wide range of musicians and musical genres, including Daft Punk, David bowie, Afrika Bambaataa, and the Human League, have roots in the futuristic sound and multimedia technology-music synergy pioneered by Kraftwerk.
Kraftwerk's electronic music, hip hop, synth pop, new wave, and House legacies earned the group the 2014 Grammy Lifetime Achievement award and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021.
Krafterwerk's Autobahn (1974) album propelled the band to fame in Europe, plugging into the modern Zen of driving with a calm steady puttering rhythm. Several internationally successful song and album releases followed, including Radio-Activity (1975), Trans-Europe Express (1977), The Man-Machine (1978), Computer World (1981), Techno Pop (1986), The Mix (1991), and Tour de France (2003).
At the height of Kraftwerk's watershed musical production in the 1970s and 1980s, the band comprised of Schneider, Hütter and Carl Bartos, Wolfgang Flür. Several of the songs from this period were created with the help of artist, poet, and friend Emil Schult.
Emil Schult was also the band's image consultant. With Hütter and Schneider, he developed the visual iconography of the group. From the outset Kraftwerk embraced the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk—creating a total work of art encompassing music, images, film, language text and performance.
Aesthetics of early album art and live performances reflected lost 20th century futurist movements like the Bauhaus and Suprematism. These total work performances created what NPR described as 'a parallel universe of retro-futurist chic.'
In parallel with the music, Kraftwerk's aesthetic developed to reflect an emerging culture of information technology, increased mobility, and globalisation—as exemplified with Computer Love and Computer World (1981).
Among the band's iconic motifs is the use of robotic mannequins to replace the band when performing Kraftwerk's 1978 single The Robots. Successive world tours from the 1990s have seen these robots become more dynamic in their synchronised robotic dance movements.
Since performing at the Venice Biennale in 2005, the art world has regarded these multimedia performances as their own kind of artistic performance. With new bandmates Ralf Hütter has become a leading force in developing the visual identity of the band and visual concepts for Kraftewerk's 3-D The Catalogue album and tour.
Debuting at a 2012 retrospective of their work at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York, the immersive 3-D video projection and sound installation titled The Catalogue 12345678 (2012) took viewers on a multisensory tour of 8 classic Kraftwerk albums.
Kraftwerk's immersive visuals have been presented as audio-visual installations and performances in gallery space around the world including the Tate, MOMA and Berlin's Sprüth Magers, which has represented the group for more than a decade. Kraftwerk Exhibitions include: 3-D Concert, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2015); 3-D Concert, Foundation Luis Vuitton, Paris (2014); The Catalogue — 3-D Concerts — 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, Tate Modern, London (2013); Retrospective — 3-D Concerts — 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, MOMA, New York (2012); 3-D Video Installation, Kunstbau Lenbachhaus, Munich (2011); Concert, 51st Venice Biennial (2005).
Kraftwerk's website can be found here.
Michael Irwin | Ocula | 2021
