by Roni Sarig
Sean O’Hagen, High Llamas:
I was attracted by the fact that Kraftwerk were using classic pop writing, which is one thing you didn’t do when you were into progressive rock. But Kraftwerk were just like, “Hang on, we do what we do, and we start off with pop writing.” Even today there’s lessons to be learned.
But while Autobahn may have been the beginning and end of the Kraftwerk story in the eyes of the mass market, for followers of krautrock and electronic music it was neither. They had been making progressive pop music since the beginning of the ‘70s, and were soon to become one of the primary roots nourishing nearly all the new computer-based music to arrive in the coming decades: disco (where they continued to thrive), techno (through their acknowledged influence on Detroit dance pioneers Juan Atkins and Derrick May), electro-funk and early hip-hop (through Afrika Bambaataa’s appropriations), new wave (in Gary Numan’s robot-man pose), and synth pop (with the stylistic borrowings of Depeche Mode and other groups). So important was Kraftwerk to even the more mainstream pop world, David Bowie dedicated a song to the group’s co-founder (“V2 Schneider”) and even Michael Jackson expressed interest in working with them (they declined).
Alex Paterson, the Orb:
Even back in ‘74 I was really influenced by them. The 22-minute version of Autobahn I imagine brought me in line with making big Orb records early on. You can cram a lot of stuff into a three-minute pop song, but you can make much better music if you give yourself ten or fifteen minutes. When they split up a few years ago two of them ended up around here checking out me and [Orb member] Thrash to see if they could work with us. That was quite weird, I assure you. Them sitting on the floor cross-legged, listening to me deejay in my own flat. They were all dressed in black! And they didn’t undo their top buttons either! That was strange – two people you idolize when you’re little, sitting there watching you deejay, asking silly questions.
Kraftwerk’s principle members, Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, studied together at the Diisseldorf Conservatory in the late ‘60s, where they were exposed to the early electronic compositions of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Their first foray into popular music came in 1970, when their quintet the Organisation released an album called Tone-Float. Within the year, Hütter and Schneider decided to pare down the group to become a duo and renamed themselves Kraftwerk (which means “power station”). By the time they’d recorded the first Kraftwerk record, though, the group had expanded to include percussionists Klaus Dinger and Thomas Hohman. While the album, recorded at their own Kling Klang studio, had hints of the ambient techno-pop sound Kraftwerk would arrive at years later, it mostly sounded like exotic art rock that had been heavily influenced by their avant-garde backgrounds.
Tim Gane, Stereolab:
The whole thing of the “stereo-lab,” with references to scientific experiments and mixing chemicals, that’s been my approach to music in a tongue-in-cheek way. I always wanted the image of the band to be that, rather than a pop group. It all comes from Kraftwerk. Our early records had the same sleeve design, with slight variations, just as Kraftwerk had done. I like the idea of records being reports, not so much individual records as an ongoing discovery. I just thought Kraftwerk was the highest point you could do in music, the whole thing influenced me. The throbbing, hypnotic music just struck a chord in me.
Following the release of Kraftwerk’s debut album, Hohman was replaced by a friend of Dinger’s, guitarist Michael Rother. The team of Dinger and Rother began to move the group’s sound into more rhythmic guitar-groove territory, a direction Hütter found so distasteful he quit the group for a while in 1971. The trio of Schneider, Dinger, and Rother lasted only about six months; then Hütter returned while Dinger and Rother left to form Neu!. Temporarily a duo once more, Kraftwerk turned to drum machine accompaniment on their Kraftwerk 2 and Ralf & Florian albums. Ironically, even after Dinger and Rother left Kraftwerk their influence remained, as Hütter and Schneider began to produce a more synthesized version of Neu!’s propulsive and metronomic “motorik” beat.
With 1974’s Autobahn, Kraftwerk entered a new phase. Recognizing a need to more effectively communicate an image for their esoteric music, the group – once again a quartet, with electronic percussionist Wolfgang Flur and guitarist/violinist Klaus Roeder – conspired with visual director Emil Schult to recast themselves as robotic man-machines that celebrated technology through synthesized music. Another thread running through the music was a nostalgia for lost European pre-War cultural institutions, such as the minimalist school of design called Bauhaus, that had been suppressed under the Nazis. With their 22-minute Autobahn (which, in shortened form, became an international hit), Kraftwerk fused a love for technology with German scenery, and turned it into what was essentially a futuristic “Born to Run” (released the same year!).
With their new image (or maybe anti-image, since it masked their real personalities behind the cold veneer of hardware) Kraftwerk became the only German band of the era to cross into the American mainstream. Though their follow-up Radio-Activity failed to take hold the way Autobahn had, 1977’s Trans-Europe Express was a return to form that made a splash on the disco charts. The title track and Europe Endless offered more continental musings, while Metal on Metal made a strong impart on early industrial music. Similarly, the following year’s The Man-Machine produced standouts such as The Robots, with its vocoder voice synthesizer, and the Euro-chic hit The Model, which reached number one in England and anticipated the arrival of new wave artists like Human League and Gary Numan.
Doug Firley, Gravity Kills:
Kraftwerk was really the avenue that I initially wanted to explore and it took me many, many years trying to reproduce music like that. And I guess I found I was really bad at it, or that there was no way to reinvent the wheel. So I got a sampler and thought instead of trying to recreate the parts, I’d just go ahead and sample them.
As more groups adopted Kraftwerk’s sound and the computer age dawned, the music became less alien and the group’s robot gimmickry began to wear thin. By the early ‘80s the band was recording only sporadically and veered toward anachronism and self-parody. Though they continued to show up in dance clubs doing songs like Tour de France, they produced little material of note during a decade when their legacy would sprout a variety of new directions in music. With their 1991 remix album, The Mix, Kraftwerk – reduced again to the duo of Ralf and Florian – were taking their cues from artists for whom they’d paved the way.
DISCOGRAPHY
Kraftwerk 1 (Philips, 1971, Germanophon, 1994).
Kraftwerk 2 (Philips, 1972; Germanophon, 1994).
Ralf and Florian (Vertigo, 1973; Germanophon, 1994).
Autobahn (Vertigo, 1974; Elektra, 1988); the international breakthrough.
Radio Activity (Capitol, 1975; Cleopatra, 1996); a challenging but largely unsuccessful follow-up, coming at the height of their success.
Trans-Europe Express (Capitol, 1977; Elektra, 1988); a strong return to the stuff that made Autobahn a success.
The Man-Machine (Capitol, 1978; Elektra, 1988); further explorations into techno-futurism.
Computer World (Warner Bros., 1981; Elektra, 1988); no longer so ahead of its time, the group now sounds strangely dated.
Electric Cafe (Warner Bros., 1986; Elektra, 1988); a mid-‘80s release, barely noticed and never followed up.
The Mix (Elektra, 1991); an album that remixes past material into ‘90s dance tracks.
The Model (Cleopatra, 1992); a compilation of the group’s best-known material.
Three Originals: The Capitol Years (Cleopatra, 1994); collects the group’s post-Autobahn records.
TRIBUTE: A Tribute to Kraftwerk: All in a Day’s Work (Mute, 1991).
TRIBUTE: Trancewerk Express Vol. I: A Tribute to Kraftwerk (Cleopatra, 1995); features European electronic acts such as Audio Science, Purity J., and Kirk.
NEU!
Tim Gane, Stereolab:
I think Neu! has been the main proto-influ
ence on Stereolab because it was completely primitive and simplistic on the surface. I loved the way the drumming would stay the same 4/4 for 20 minutes. That was really powerful, and I thought we could do something with it. The more simple and unchanging you make the music the more possibilities there are for melody and things on top.
As early as 1971, Neu! (pronounced “noy” and translated into English as “New!”) provided the prototype for the avant-garde minimalist pop sounds of ‘90s post-rock bands. With their distinctive motorik beat and gently coerced guitar effects, Neu! offered a comforting glimpse into a future ambient bubblegum sound that was so inspiring to David Bowie he came to Germany in the late ‘70s and made three Neu!-influenced albums that stand among his finest recordings. Neu! also impacted, perhaps indirectly, the first generation of British punk, and continued to impact Bowie clones and post-punk bands up through Ultravox, Sonic Youth (who titled a song “Two Cool Rock Chicks Listening to Neu!”), and Buffalo Daughter.
David Bowie:
I thought the first Neu! album, in particular, was just gigantically wonderful. Looking at that against punk, I had absolutely no doubt where the future of music was going, and for me it was out of Germany at that time. [from Mojo magazine]
Neu! began in 1971 as part of the band Kraftwerk. Guitarist Michael Rother and drummer Klaus Dinger had briefly joined that group, and even made an appearance on German television as two-thirds of the band, until Kraftwerk’s leaders – Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider – decided to go it alone as a duo. Rother and Dinger also decided to carry on as a twosome, and Neu! was born. Making the most of the tools they had on hand, Neu! created entire soundscapes using little more than a drum set and an effects-heavy guitar.
Within a year, they recorded a debut album – the critically acclaimed Neu! – with well-known krautrock producer Conrad Plank. The sparsely designed cover art – ”NEU!” brush-stroked in bold red against a solid white background – perfectly captured the minimalism of the music. Opening with the 10-minute voyage of Hallogallo, the duo virtually perfected the steady driving, metronomic motorik beat that would later be associated with Kraftwerk’s most successful music. Hallogallo, and other, less rhythmically propulsive tracks like Lieber Honig and Weissensee, cast an irresistible spell, while slipping in enough traces of melody to move the mostly instrumental music along. Negativland, with its wall of industrial noise deflecting a funk-dub guitar line, prefigured post-punk – and provided the name for San Francisco’s culture-jamming group.
After some time spent touring with members of Guru Guru, Neu! started work on its second record, Neu! 2, which would feature virtually the same album cover as the debut, but with a large “2” now spray-painted on top. The 11-minute Für immer opened the record by recapturing Hallogallo’s incessantly hypnotic forward motion, and added churning guitars to make it even more dramatic. The misleadingly titled Lila Engel (Lilac Angel) closed the first half of the record with a savage tribal punk assault, complete with Dinger’s grunted vocals. At this point in the making of the album, Dinger and Rother’s recording budget ran out and the two were forced to use prerecorded material to fill side two. Making the best of a bad situation, they offered sped-up, slowed-down, and switched-around versions of their earlier non-album single Neuschnee ‘V’ Super. Fortunately for the group’s reputation, the two terrifically aggressive and modern rock cuts were among their best work.
Mark Hosier, Negativland:
In the late 70’s, I was 17 and totally thrilled to discover this world of unusual, independent music from Germany, it was so exotic and wild. Among them was Neu!. You put on Neu! 2 and you hear the sound of someone putting on a record. It just blew my mind, it was so weird beyond weird. It wasn’t even breaking any rules, it was as if the rules didn’t even exist. Back then, it was like hearing some music that was from another planet.
Embittered by their experience recording Neu! 2, the duo split up after the album’s release. Rother started a band called Harmonia with yet another German musical duo, Cluster’s Dieter Moebius and Hans Joachim Roedelius. Dinger formed his own band, La Düsseldorf, a more aggressive proto-punk trio that included his brother Thomas and Hans Lampe. Before they could release an album, though, Rother approached Dinger with a desire to make one last Neu! record to end the group on a more positive note. Along with Thomas Dinger and Lampe, Rother and Dinger produced Neu! ‘75, which overwhelmingly achieved its goal. The first side, dominated by Rother and clearly informed by his work with Harmonia, featured a more ethereal take on Neu!’s signature sound. The Dinger-controlled second side was a blueprint for La Düsseldorf’s soon-to-be revealed style. Klaus’s ferociously whining vocals on Hero and After Eight would have an influence on Johnny Rotten’s singing style in the Sex Pistols.
Julian Cope:
You know, I can say this over and over till I’m a boring old git but Side 2 [of Neu! ‘75] is punk as fuck and two years ahead. Not the Stooges, not the Dolls, not American at all. You hear Hero and After Eight and British punk suddenly makes sense. For a few beautiful months before old-prick Johnny Thunders brought heroin-injecting into the punk scene, it was really the Neu!-driven sound of the Sex Pistols that turned on the young punks. And it was Klaus Dinger & Michael Rotter who deserved the credit and never got it. [from Cope’s book Krautrock Sampler]
Having brought Neu! to respectable closure, Dinger continued with La Düsseldorf (who in 1979 David Bowie called “the soundtrack of the ‘80s”) and had success expanding on Neu! ‘75’s breakthroughs. Rother made another Harmonia record, and produced a record for his Harmonia-mates in Cluster (another, previously unreleased, collaboration between Harmonia and Brian Eno was recently released as well). Aside from a brief reunion in the ‘80s, Rother and Dinger have pursued solo careers ever since.
DISCOGRAPHY
Neu! (Brain / United Artists, 1972; Germanophon [CD reissue]); the mesmerizing debut.
Neu! 2 (Brain / United Artists, 1973; Germanophon [CD reissue]); one-half of a terrific follow-up, though marred by a hastily thrown together second side.
Neu! ‘75 (Brain / United Artists, 1975; Germanophon [CD reissue]); a final album that highlighted the distinct personalities of the duo.
Neu! 4 (Captain Trip [Japan], 1995); material recorded by Dinger and Rother, along with other musicians, in 1985 and ‘86.
Neu! ‘72 Live (Captain Trip [Japan], 1996); not a concert, but rather a recording of an early rehearsal / jam session by the group.
SOUND SCULPTORS
From the time recording studios first appeared earlier this century, the conventional approach to recording music has been to create the truest possible reproduction of the sounds made by the musicians. While this kind of sound engineering can require a great deal of skill and technical knowledge, for the most part it exists not as an art in itself but rather as a means of conveying the art of the performer.
As the technological capabilities of the recording studio advanced, the room for creativity in recording increased. Sound engineers, record producers, and the artists themselves began to conceive of ways to express themselves in the areas of sound treatments, tape editing, and the mixing of multitrack recordings. The studio moved from being a mere device for documentation to becoming a tool for creation.
The very idea that a producer can be an artist – and a recording studio can be an instrument – represents a significant conceptual leap in music. Precedents go back to the development of musique concrète in the ‘40s, when experimental composers such as Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer began manipulating prerecorded sounds to create new compositions. It wasn’t until the ‘60s that these ideas were applied to popular music, and they did not trickle down from the high art concept of musique concrète. Instead, this most revolutionary aesthetic development in late 20th-century popular music came from Jamaica, a relatively poor country whose recording facilities were quite primitive at the time.
In search of new ways to thrill their listeners with limited material, Jamaican producers such
as King Tubby and Lee “Scratch’’ Perry began to rework previously recorded music in ways that made the songs sound fresh – or even like entirely new pieces of music. Dub, as this studio-based derivation of popular rock steady and reggae styles was called, caught on in Jamaican dance halls. For the first time in popular music, producers who did not necessarily sing, play an instrument, or write songs – who simply reshaped the sounds of songs – could be recognized as the primary artist in a piece of music.
Now, all varieties of music can be manipulated by “remixers” who reimagine the work of others – often to make it more danceable – and who are given as much credit as the original artist. In hip-hop and techno, nonmusician DJs have become recognized artists for merely playing records in new and unusual ways, such as scratching and elongating breakbeats. Digital sampling technology has made it easier than ever to create new music from previously recorded sounds, to a point where a significant number of today’s recording artists – particularly in electronic music, but in rock as well – are not musicians at all, but essentially producers.
While more mainstream rock has maintained the primacy of the performer and songwriter in the creative process, it too has been deeply affected by the emergence of the producer as artist. In the ‘60s, producers such as Phil Spector (with his many “girl groups”) and George Martin (with the Beatles) established a tradition of the producer as a vital force in the creation of sophisticated pop music. In the ‘70s, Brian Eno emerged (as had Martin) from an art music tradition familiar with the ideas of musique concrète. Though Eno was not primarily a producer at the start of his career, his ability to integrate all types of recording and compositional techniques – as well as his stylistic innovations and high-profile production work – have made him a model for the new type of recording artist who uses all available tools, from acoustic instruments to digital effects, in music.
