Kraftwerk: The Godfathers of Techno
In early 2018 inside Helsinki’s Finlandia House, four men take to the stage, each dressed head to toe in Tron-style lycra. They stand behind their own podium, that looks more like the controls to some sort of spaceship than an instrument. They could almost be passed off as somebody’s dad gone rogue before a Sunday morning cycle when in fact, they are some of the greatest musical pioneers of the twentieth century. They continue behind their navigation systems for more than two hours, performing a live compilation of their entire career, spanning over forty seven years.
They are of course, Kraftwerk. Or as it is meant to be enunciated: ‘Kraft-verk’.
Formed in 1970 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, when the world was enjoying the final years of the Beatles and marvelling at new kid on the block David Bowie, Kraftwerk were embracing synthesisers, drum machines and vocoders. The group pushed these new technologies to their limits and unearthed brand new sonic worlds; giving birth to genres that would ultimately become the foundation for techno and modern pop music.
“Kraftwerk are to contemporary electronic music what the Beatles and the Rolling Stones are to contemporary rock music” — Moby
In the decades that followed the Second World War, Germany found itself in something of a cultural wilderness. The country was split into East and West, with any expression of nationalism typically frowned upon, but as the counter culture movement blazed it’s way through America and Britain, Kraftwerk manufactured a uniquely German persona to express their cultural identity without the impossible baggage of Nazism. They openly embraced German stereotypes: the precision, the order and efficiency — starting first with their name ‘Kraftwerk’, which means ‘power plant’. Decades before Daft Punk put on their helmets, Kraftwerk looked almost robotic in their mannerisms. When most popular European acts of that era had English names or sang English lyrics (I’m talking about you, ABBA), Kraftwerk went the other way; using make up to appear like mannequins; lifeless and waxlike. Their songs were precise and methodical in every aspect.
Founding member Ralf Hütter said of Kraftwerk’s origins:
“There was really no German culture after the war. Everyone was rebuilding their homes and getting their little Volkswagens. In the clubs when we first started playing, you never heard a German record; you switched on the radio and all you heard was Anglo-American music; you went to the cinema and all the films were Italian and French. That’s OK, but we needed our own cultural identity.”
“They began by daring to include German-language lyrics in their songwriting and ended up creating an entirely new form of music: futuristic, optimistic and extremely technologically progressive. Kraftwerk was born.” — Uwe Schütte
Uwe Schütte Kraftwerk: Future Music From Germany
It’s difficult to imagine, when anyone with an iPhone can whip up a simple electro loop, just how innovative they were. This kind of music simply didn’t exist. Kraftwerk didn’t just pioneer a genre; they literally materialised it out of thin air. Before Kraftwerk, no one had made a complete song with a computer. Every occurrence of a synthetic drum or synthetic bass pulse in any song that has been released since, can and will be inevitably traced back to the innovation of Kraftwerk.
As they continued on their journey of electronic wizardry throughout the seventies, the use of vocoders to create that unique robotic vocal sound became more prevalent. The effect first appeared on their 1974 single ‘Autobahn’, but it wasn’t until almost a decade later in 1982 that Afrika Bambaataa, a rapper from the Bronx, sampled Kraftwerk’s vocoder- heavy ‘Trans-Europe-Express’ to form the basis of his song ‘Planet Rock’. A year later, Michael Jonzun recorded the first hip-hop vocoder album, Lost in Space.
Kraftwerks influence on American music during the eighties wasn’t limited to hip-hop either. Their use of synthesisers and sequenced drum arrangements became the blueprint for countless genres and influencing Detroit musicians such as Juan Atkins, who sampled numerous Kraftwerk songs during the eighties, giving birth to the term ‘techno’.
“Kraftwerk had a really big inspiration on the beginning of hip-hop.” — Dr Dre
If that wasn’t enough, they didn’t just influence literally all of music, but had a huge impact on live performance design as well. Kraftwerk’s live shows were (and still are) spectacular displays of cutting edge technology. While the members of the group are almost completely static, huge projections shine behind them, transporting audiences to entirely new worlds.
“My eyes were darting between the band and video projections, not sure where I should focus my attention, feeling less like watching a concert and more like I was stepping into this universe that Kraftwerk had created.” — Liz Ohanesian
The influence of Kraftwerk can be seen in literally all of modern pop music. Their innovation and groundbreaking methods are now so widely adopted that it’s easy to take their genius for granted. Their lineage may have evolved into other things: like the vocoded vocals morphing into modern autotune or the arduous analogue synthesis into simple digital software, Kraftwerk are the origins for it all.
Take a look at the pop music world in 2021 and you will find that The Beatles are no longer the most influential pop band in the Western world.
Kraftwerk is.
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