Information AboutKraftwerk |
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Kraftwerk ( Pronounced {Link without Title} , German for " Power Station ") is a German musical group who have made significant contributions to the development of Electronic Music . The band was founded by Florian Schneider-Esleben and Ralf Hütter in 1970, but became widely known as a quartet consisting of Wolfgang Flür and Karl Bartos alongside the founding members. The techniques Kraftwerk introduced, together with the equipment they developed, are now commonplace in modern music. They have been a major influence on the , Kraftwerk : Minimum-Maximum Live HISTORY Kraftwerk was founded in 1970 by Florian Schneider-Esleben (flute) and Ralf Hütter (keyboards), the pair setting up their Kling Klang studio in Düsseldorf . The two had met as students in the late 1960s, participating in the experimental music scene of the time which the UK music press dubbed " Krautrock ". The early Kraftwerk line-ups (1970-1974) fluctuated, Hütter and Schneider working with around half a dozen other musicians over the course of recording four albums and sporadic live appearances - most notably guitarist Michael Rother and drummer Klaus Dinger , who left to form Neu! . The input, expertise and influence of producer/engineer Konrad "Conny" Plank was also significant. Plank worked with many other leading German acts (including members of Can , Neu! , Cluster , Harmonia ) and largely as a result of his work with Kraftwerk, Plank's studio in Cologne (Köln) became one of the most sought-after studios in the late 1970s. Plank produced the first four Kraftwerk albums, but ceased working with them after the commercial success of ''Autobahn'', apparently over a dispute about contracts. '' (1970).]] Painter Emil Schult became a regular collaborator with the band beginning in 1973 (originally playing bass guitar and electric violin, then designing artwork and additional lyrics, and accompanying them on tour). What is generally regarded as the classic Kraftwerk line-up formed in 1975, for the ''Autobahn'' tour. This saw the band presented as an electronic quartet, with Hütter and Schneider joined by Wolfgang Flür and Karl Bartos as electronic percussionists. This quartet would be the band's public persona for their classic output of the 1970s and 1980s. (Flür had joined the band in 1973 as a drummer, in preparation for a television appearance to promote their third album. This show saw the public debut of the group's striking self-built electronic percussion pads, played by Flür.) The band is notoriously reclusive, so much so that it is rumoured that their own record company does not have their phone numbers. Another notable example of their eccentric behaviour was reported to Johnny Marr of The Smiths by Karl Bartos, who explained that anyone trying to contact the band for collaboration would be told that their studio telephone did not have a ringer, as during recording the band did not like to hear any kind of noise pollution. Instead, they were instructed to phone the studio at a certain time on the dot, whereupon the phone would be answered by Ralf Hutter, despite himself never hearing the phone ring. Hutter: "The telephone is an antiquity — you never know who is calling, there is no image, it is an outmoded product which constantly disrupts work." (interviewed in ''Liberation'', 1991) '' (1973).]] After years of withdrawal from live performance, Kraftwerk began to tour again more regularly from the late 1990s onwards. Ralf had wanted to play more shows over the years, but the undertaking of shipping all their huge, analog equipment hindered world tours and travel outside of Europe. During this decade the band often stated they were working on new material — though speculation about release dates fell through several times. The growing time between recordings, the rarity of live performances and the increasingly exacting and protracted nature of the recording process were the major reasons behind the departure of Flür and especially Bartos, whose improvisations were an essential part of the earlier Kraftwerk recordings. Following the departure of Flür and Bartos, various Kling Klang studio personnel such as Fritz Hilpert and Henning Schmitz have appeared in the Kraftwerk line-up. A website, www.kraftwerk.com appeared in November 1996, with further development work occurring since 1999 and the resumption of audio releases by the group. Like the parallel releases of both German and English language recordings, the website is now accessible with either international ( from a previous owner. In late summer 1999 the original recordings of " Tour De France " were finally released on CD, signalling the re-commencement of public activity. The single ''Expo 2000'', their first new song in 13 years, was released in December, 1999, and was subsequently remixed by contemporary electronic musicians such as Orbital . In 2000, ex-member Flür published his autobiography in Germany, ''Kraftwerk: I Was a Robot'', which revealed many previously unreported details about life in the band. This book met with hostility and litigation from Hütter/Schneider, who disputed several of its claims (e.g. that Flür had built the band's first electronic drum pads) and objected to the public discussion of personal information. In August 2003, the band finally released ''Tour De France Soundtracks'' , their first album of new material since 1986's ''Electric Café''. June 2005 saw the release of a live album, ''Minimum-Maximum'' , which was compiled from the shows on the band's European tour of spring 2004 and received extremely positive reviews. Most of the tracks featured had been heavily reworked and remodelled from the existing studio versions. The album was nominated for a Grammy Award for ''Best Electronic/Dance Album.'' Released with the album was a ''Minimum-Maximum'' DVD, featuring live footage of the band performing the ''Minimum-Maximum'' tracks in various venues all over the world. '' (1974).]] MUSIC After several early experimental albums, their breakthrough came in 1974 ( 1974 In Music ) with the '' Autobahn '' album and its 22-minute title track (you can hear a sample on the Album's Page ), which was a worldwide hit and demonstrated their increasing reliance on Synthesizers and electronics. This was followed by a trio of albums that were to exert a huge influence on popular music — '' Radio-Activity '' (1975), '' Trans-Europe Express '' (1977) and the seminal '' The Man Machine '' (1978). Kraftwerk's lyrics deal with postwar European urban life and technology — travelling by car on the Autobahn , travelling by train, using home computers and the like. The lyrics are usually very minimal, but reveal both an innocent celebration of, and a knowing caution about, the modern world, as well as playing an integral role in the rhythmic structure of the songs. Many of Kraftwerk's songs express the paradoxical nature of modern urban life — a strong sense of alienation existing side by side with a celebration of the joys of modern technology. Kraftwerk were one of the first "pop" acts to record using pure electronic (or electronically processed) instruments and sounds exclusively. Many of the vocals in Kraftwerk songs are processed through a Vocoder , or generated using Speech Synthesis software — a Speak & Spell was used on their 1981 album '' Computer World ''. They also pioneered the use of backing tracks that were generated by the electronic sequencing of purely synthetic sounds. Notably, all of their albums from ''Trans–Europe Express'' onwards have been recorded in two separate versions: one with German vocals for sale in Germany , and one with English vocals for international sale, with occasional other language variations when conceptually appropriate. The single " Tour De France " featured lyrics in French . The German language versions are Kraftwerk's attempt to provide an alternative to the dominant Anglo–American influence in rock and pop music: "So you see another group, like Tangerine Dream , although they are German they have an English name, so they create onstage an Anglo–American identity, which we completely deny. We want the whole world to know that we are from Germany, because the German mentality—which is more advanced—will always be part of our behavior. We create out of the German language, the mother language, which is very mechanical; we use it as the basic structure of our music." (Hütter) ALBUMS
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