Kraftwerk

Wow.

What the hell video are they dancing in that room in??

What the hell video are they dancing in that room in??

― funny and lolexander (Stevie D(eux))

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkuUuBt7nrE

Close-down of a studio for electronic music in Düsseldorf / Germany...

O_o

"Die Geräte sind gebraucht und teilweise längere Zeit nicht benutzt. Aufgrund der Menge der Geräte kann deren Funktion nicht im einzelnen geprüft werden. Daher Verkauf ohne Gewährleistung."

"The devices are used and sometimes not used for a long time. Due to the amount of equipment whose function can not be examined in detail. Therefore, sales without warranty."

'Ruckzuck' is all time for me!

So Douglas Wolk interviewed Ralf.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/29/kraftwerk-speak-the-german-electropop-act-discuss-autobahn-technology-and-hint-at-new-album.html

A bit of a cliffhanger that

as if

early concert from winter 1970 in soest with the original formation (ralf, florian & klaus) from the rockpalast archive.
tracklist:
- stratovarius (improvised, elemental, more an intro than a track)
- ruckzuck (where the flute meets the motorik beat)
- heavy metal kids (where stockhausen meets prog)
- improvisation 1 (kraut rock jam)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF1B4smQL7s

I wanna be excited for it but "it's coming" has been their answer since like 2009

.. Like the first three albums' boxsets

is that supposedly coming? i feel like they never talk about it or reference it at all

When the first box finally came out, Mojo talked to Ralf, and he cryptically alluded to the delay on the first lps getting reissued was due to the tapes being in less than optimal condition ("they are very dusty" he said).

ooooh. hmm. it just seems odd that they also never play anything from those albums either.

but I suppose that not many of those songs would fit in very smoothly with their Autobahn-present material

was just listening to this, speaking of those missing albums - a very nice radio broadcast from 1974 - http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=1815

it doesn't seem odd at all that they don't play that stuff - it's totally different than what they're known for. they don't really play gems like "Franz Schubert" or for that matter anything off the second side of Autobahn either.

but am i totally making it up that they (well, Ralf at this point) seem to completely avoid ever talking about that era? I feel like that's been a standard talking point in most articles about them over the last several years

or for that matter anything off the second side of Autobahn either.

p sure they do at Autobahn shows

The "Ralf and Florian" album would fit in with their current shows, no problem.

"Ralf"

yeah.

Funnily enough, I managed to get a copy for very cheap off ebay last year as they'd not 'graded' it (turned out to be mint), and they'd listed it as "Ralph and Floria" (or something like that)

http://s.pixogs.com/image/R-3371536-1327833218.jpeg

a very nice radio broadcast from 1974 - http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=1815

― tylerw, Thursday, May 1, 2014 8:50 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

had not heard this one -- thank you! great fidelity very mellow & a wonderful 'Kling Klang'.

but am i totally making it up that they (well, Ralf at this point) seem to completely avoid ever talking about that era?

might be uncomfortable for Ralf to talk about that stretch when he wasn't in the band, or how Florian, Michael, Klaus & Conny had gotten half way through recording a second KW album without him. I'm relieved those tapes have been found and transferred because it doesn't look as if we're going to be hearing them within any of the principals' lifetimes

Are there any other really jammy Radio Bremen type shows where they do that crazy "Ruckzuck"?

"Ralf and Florian" is the best. I could listen to that thing all day.

xpost 'ruckzuck' was played in concert up till '75. the 74-75 versions are mellower 'Ralf and Florian' spins on it and there's a great one in the set tylerw just posted.

the Soest version just posted last month is on par with the Bremen one, and if you can handle the bongos, there's an Organization version in which Florian appears to be wearing a t-shirt consisting entirely of a picture of his own head - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eB-sl6ZLpo

New hour long documentary on BBC4 this coming Friday.

My wife just walked in while I was playing "Hall of Mirrors" and asked if it was Coil. Never made that connection, but I can definitely hear why she might have thought that, at least through the wall of her office.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdjEqP6mhV4&t=71

omg

I KNOW

Sehr gut!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B3KVf9-CUAAoO-E.jpg

Came across this book at work last week:

http://www.portalkunstgeschichte.de/getmedia.php/_media/coverimport/3929742683-orig.jpg

What am I missing

It's a book about Florian's architect dad

Yes, apologies, I am a sad Kraftwerk nerd.

But Florian was the weirdo mystery element in the group

― Vicious Cop Kills Gentle Fool (Tom D.), dinsdag 6 januari 2009 12:07 (6 years ago)

https://youtu.be/b3jbXd68xC4?t=49s

So...I got 2 tickets to the Nashville show. Whoa?!

Got a few tix for the Portland show. Extremely excited for this...

Ticketmaster crashed, but I refreshed often enough to score close-to-the-back-of-balcony seats. Still psyched that I made it through the system.

Saw them the other night. Incredible.

yo why did no one insist I listen to Electric Cafe? Like I always heard it was supposed to be some behind-the-times failed experiment, not an album full of awesome banging electrofunk jams smh.

Entirely possible I've listened to Electric Cafe more than any other Kraftwerk album.

Electric Cafe is not a *bad* album (and for any other band it would possibly be a gr8 album) but it's just not as good as the others.

Also, it's just very, very dated. Like, every album of theirs from Ralf und Florian to Computer World (fuck any Radioactivity haters, that's such an amazing record) sounds as if it could conceivably have come out at any point in the last 40 years. But Electric Cafe sounds like it could only have come out in 1986.

Which is fine if you like 1986, but I wouldn't want to live there.

Some day I guess I'll track down the demos but I'd rather dig around in the 70/71 stuff.

I can't imagine what it's like, going to see Kraftwerk in 2015. I imagine it's like going to see 4 very skilled AV technicians recreating a movie about Kraftwerk, with a really good sound system. At least, that's what it looks like from instagrams, I guess. But reading every interview with Ralf from about 1991 onwards, there's a sense that there's a personality there repeating witty things and answering questions and producing words that look slick when printed on a page. But there is something that is just *missing* from those interviews that was still there when I read interviews with the same man from the 70s and 80s. And I don't know what that missing thing is, but I suspect it would also be not present at current shows.

imagine it's like going to see 4 very skilled AV technicians recreating a movie about Kraftwerk, with a really good sound system.

Pretty much. But it's a REALLY good sound system.

(The 3D Katalog shows are worthwhile for their inherent acknowledgement of this - the creative engine of Kraftwerk died over 30 years ago, but this latest iteration of picking over the same cogs and polishing them in a new way makes the redundancy the focus: recontextualising every album as a live piece in new arrangements, exhuming and rebuilding graphics from across their career with the same prissiness as they do the music, making the venue and 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 staging a larger frame for the contextualising of the 'content'...)

"The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility"