Kraftwerk

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"

Nah, I don't think my objections are that Walter Benjaminny?

I've been thinking about it, but I feel hesitant to expand, because I'm coming very much from a place of Fandom, and ILM is not really open to that point of view, it's a place for Critics and for Record Store Dudes, not for actual Fandom.

Part of it is just simply... I don't *like* the new arrangements. A big part of what has always appealed to me about Kraftwerk is just how clean and sparse and efficient their particular kind of minimalism was. It's not that I'm fetishistic about analogue gear or whatever, I don't care if it's recreated digitally. But because of the limitations of that old gear, being monophonic or highly limited, every part having to be played by hand because sequencers were so limited - it's like they were forced by the limitations into very specific choices, and the minimalism that resulted had an elegance and an aesthetic that *was* the appeal. Now they've got so much technology capable of so much that they can do everything at once, they are no longer forced by the limitations to make those choices, and can just kind of throw the whole kitchen sink at the songs. When what I loved was the purity and simplicity and... minimalism of it. Maybe that was just accidental, and the songs would always have sounded like the current versions had that technology been available during the 70s! But, with every iteration, they get further away from what I liked about the stuff in the first place. (I don't like The Mix and Minimum-Maximum, either!)

That is the principle objection, though my others are less easy to defend.

I keep getting distracted by the "rockism v poptimism" dichotomy here: that argument, does it matter who is onstage, playing a particular piece of music. And in this, through absolutely shirking the Rockism diktat of "the fetish-object of this musician, playing this instrument, making this piece of music" they haven't moved forward into poptimism (in which it is the unique combination of the song with the personality singing it, rather than either the song or the singer) but back into the old-fashioned Classical approach that they spent their first years out of conservatory deriding and decrying! That it's now a museum piece, watch these competent performers play the symphonies of Kraftwerk, like going to a symphony orchestra. Which is fine; I enjoy going to symphonies and hearing music reproduced more or less as it was written two hundred years ago. Or 40 years ago, in this case. Except, it isn't. Fashions in orchestras change, fashions in conductors change and the actual instruments and concert halls and technology change. I just don't like the fashion in which these technicians are performing it right now.

Back in the 70s, 4 people playing with monophonic equipment, every choice was an aesthetic one. Ralf's singing and doing filter sweeps, so he's occupied. Florian is playing a monophonic electronic flute, so if you want an actual counter-melody against it, then it has to be Karl. Having Karl playing the counter-melody means you've only got one percussionist, so the rhythm track has to very carefully pared back to what can be played with only two hands, so Wolfgang can cover it. Those choices created interesting tensions in the music, where what didn't get played was as important as what got played.

So... does it matter who, exactly onstage is performing this stuff? Is it Rockist and silly to care? Does it matter?

Not if you're approaching it as a classical symphony, or a museum piece, no it doesn't. But the fact that they can now have every piece of music playing at once means that all of those interesting tensions of what got left out, the negative space of the pieces that made the minimalism work, are gone, in these more recent performances.

And... and...

Rev I feel like I have failed you in this respect bcz "Electric Cafe" is fucking magical and also this En Vogue song is a str8 rip of "Boom Boing Tschak", like hilariously so

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i0WhdG6B14

I was just listening to that En Vogue for the first time a few weeks ago and kinda marvelling at the "NON STOP" sample. :)

I keep getting distracted by the "rockism v poptimism" dichotomy here

yeah that's really a fan thing and not critics..

I saw Kraftwerk 10 years ago or so and enjoyed dancing to it very much.

10 years ago I might have gone to see them. Florian was still with them then.

yup, he was. I cant remember exactly what year it was but it was at the carling academy in Glasgow.
The mate i went with saw them in about 1990 (his big brother saw them in the 70s) my mate said it was much better this time than on the mix tour.

ralf really got into it too, he was smiling and nodding his head to the music. Florian was Florian.

every album of theirs from Ralf und Florian to Computer World...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.

I feel like I want to challenge this but I admit I would have to do some listening to be sure or make a thorough job of it. I feel like both claims merit challenging, though.

Is this entirely about technology and not about compositions or style?

Well, for me, Electric Cafe sounds so dated because of the production and the specific technology.

It's like they lost confidence in their own production abilities and handed it over to "this week's flavour" which resulted in a Kraftwerk record that just sounded like it was following rather than setting the standards that other people would be using on their next records. I know that sounds wanky and I'm expressing it poorly, but I just particularly hate that era of production and sounds.

But when I play people Kraftwerk records (which I have been annoyingly doing to people at work lately) they don't say "oh, this sounds like the 70s" or "this sounds so retro" they tend just not to notice what era it's from. And I don't think that's me just attuning to my own personal sweet spot, because most of their big records came out when I was in single digits and not paying attention to music.

I'm still trying to work out *why* it matters to me, that I feel like, if you're seeing Kraftwerk without Florian, you're not "seeing Kraftwerk", you're seeing Ralf and a bunch of AV technicians putting on a heritage performance, but I can't express it without descending into wanky Rockist poses. When the conditions described above haven't applied since before the 90s. And why should it matter to me if Florian is there or not, when everything has been digitally repackaged into Audio-Visual chunks in a digital workstation so that they can just cup and chop blocks and segments of songs as needed, and provide three minutes of Autobahn or eight or 22, depending on how much Autobahn has been paid for.

And I can't without either descending into illegitimate Rockist notions of authenticity, or just plain fangirl wailing of "but he's my favourite and I want to see him!"

It's amazing how many people actually thought Florian was Ralf as he was the one who really stood out in pics

Ugh, I just typed out another whole essay on Ralf and collaboration and personality in performance and films without actors, but I'm gonna save it for the OWOB I think.

why?

Saw them on Florian's last tour - afterwards our group all felt the experience was closer to performance art than to a 'rock gig' - Ralf and Florian as Gilbert and George. So I think these appearances and little dribbles here and there of new music are very much akin to a fine artist's 'late period': - playful, repetitive, charming, self-referential - a Matisse collage - but ultimately not what their reputation will rest on.

Because I get bored of writing out long complicated posts which get one word responses. x-post

While I love electronic music that depends entirely on analogue synthesis just as much as anyone that enjoys electronic music, I have to say that I love the harder, more percussive, heavily arranged sound of mid '80s electronic music just as much. Music made on the Synclavier/Fairlight CMI/Linndrum/Emulator may not generally be perceived as being as "timeless" as the earlier music made either entirely or almost entirely using analogue synthesis, but I don't let such things trouble me as, as outmoded as that technology is in 2015, the music made with that technology still sounds far less stale to me than a lot of rock music, and undoubtedly (it goes without saying) far, far, FAR less stale to me than retro-rock Britpoppers, 21st Century landfill indie and countless rock/indie bands that use the same old cliches time and time again. Also, I happen to like the sound of the technology and the productions of that period.

I have to say that I love the harder, more percussive, heavily arranged sound of mid '80s electronic music just as much. Music made on the Synclavier/Fairlight CMI/Linndrum/Emulator

This is pretty much my favorite type of music right now, so EC is really floating my boat in that respect.

i'm essentially a fan but being a fan isn't exclusive of being a critic... like, branwell, when you say that you don't enjoy modern-day kraftwerk shows, that's an intrinsically critical response. and one that i can understand, honestly- it's like modern-day residents shows. kraftwerk were always about artifice, and if they could have played a show like this in 1976, well, they probably would have, but that inability to do so made them a better band. improved technological capabilities don't unilaterally improve a group's aesthetic capabilities.

Worth noting they were using sequencers as early as Trans-Europe Express, but they didn't tour between 76 and 81 so when they finally toured behind Computer World their live show was a very different thing than what it had been in the mid-70s but their records had already reflected those changes.

"Being A Fan" is not exclusive of being *critical*, but there is a certain stance or approach to music which is the approach of Fandom, and another stance which is Being A Critic (maybe I should just call it "Record Store Dude") which just particularly winds me up.

I am bad with words, so it's hard to express this, but to me, it's like Fandom approach is: "Electric Cafe is quite different from other Kraftwerk records, that means it's my favourite / least favourite, here's why I love it / hate it, these are the bits that are like their other records, these are the bits that are like other artists maybe" and so on and so forth, discussing that record and its discontents or pleasures within the context of loving and wanting to know more about Kraftwerk. Music Critic / Record Store Dude / ILM Nerd approach is like: "Electric Cafe is canonically Bad, this means it's the New Jersey of Kraftwerk, let's start a thread called "Every Major Band Has An Electric Cafe" where we try to shoehorn Steely Dan or Third Eye Blind records into this mould, hey, if ILM had existed in 1986, where do you think Electric Cafe would have places on its EOY list" One is performing fandom and loving a thing a bit too much; the other is treating Music as a football league. ILM, as a whole, is very accepting of the latter mode of discourse, and very unforgiving towards the former. That's what I'm carping about, when I'm complaining that ILM isn't a very good place for Fandom.

kraftwerk were always about artifice, and if they could have played a show like this in 1976, well, they probably would have

Dude, this isn't criticism, this is basically Fan Fiction.

And y'know, I *love* fan fiction, so if you wanted to write an AU fic about a Fairlight or a Powerbook loaded with Ableton falling through a rift in the SpaceTime continuum and landing in KlingKlang in 1976, I fully support you in that endeavour! (That would be brilliant, actually, because I'm imagining Ralf being all "Wass ist das?" and Wolfgang discovering it conducts electricity when he hits it with an electronic drumstick but it takes Karl prising it open and "oh no Karl, you've broken it!" and Karl, because he's 12 and he can figure out how to set the timer on Ralf's Betamax and Ralf can't, he finally gets it open and works out how to turn it on. But then Flori discovers the speech function and keeps making it say "RALF IST EINE WIENER-SCHNITZEL" in robot voices and cackling himself silly as it sputters "WIE-WIE-WIENER RALF IST EINE WIENER!" and then David Tennant and Billie Piper turn up and they're like "Guys, this is not your technology, this is not your time, can we have the shiny silver box, please, now?" but Florian won't stop trying to sample the cool noises that the TARDIS is making and... you can see where this is going.

The thing is, multi-track recording technology existed in 1975. And if they wanted to make a super-layered, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink super-slick prog record, they could have. But they didn't. They made a weird, stark, almost austere minimal record like Radioactivity. And I'm realising as I say this, that only part of that was the available technology, but part of that was a deliberate aesthetic choice that they made in the context of 1975. I think that limitations do force and increase creativity in really interesting ways. But Kraftwerk already had an aesthetic, not so much of artifice (though artifice was part of it) but of streamlining and reduction and minimalism.

That that is what I'm responding to on those records, and perhaps what I don't like in more recent shows is the addition of "Maximum" which was never part of the Kraftwerk aesthetic in the way that "Minimum" was.

Also, the production is a red herring on Electric Cafe. I recognise that that heavily gated mid-80s production is either a) something you either love or hate or b) something which is appropriate and sounds great on a Jody Watley record or an Age of Chance single, but just sounds *weird* on a Kraftwerk record, like they're wearing someone else's clothes or they've just stuck on a false moustache.

But my other complaints don't go away. It's the first record between Ralf und Florian and Tour de France Soundtracks that doesn't have a recognisable ~concept~ behind it, and it just sounds a little lost. Like a collection of beats in search of a song that never comes along. I guess a Kraftwerk record doesn't *have* to have an overarching concept to link it all together, but it does have to have those super-earwormy catchy pop songs, which just aren't there. I do love the super-abstract beat-only Kraftwerk songs on previous records, like Metal On Metal or Nummern, but for me, they work as breakdowns or super-extended riffs on Trans Europe Express or Pocket Calculator, they are best as part of a context of a whole. Electric Cafe is just the beat sections, but the pop songs they're attached to just aren't strong enough to carry off the record. They're extended dance remixes of pop singles where they forgot to write the pop single! All techno; no pop. (And the techno isn't even that great.) I walk away from every other Kraftwerk record humming something. Nothing from EC sticks in the same way.

Ok now I've fallen into the trap of "Fandom": being a boring pedant saying boring things about a boring record I don't even particularly like because I feel like I have to defend the ~favourite~. :-/

Is this the 1983 demos you lot were all talking about?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djNorx3qsEE

Sounds like the songs from Electric Cafe, but with more ~Kraftwerky~ production values?

I take it all back. It's not the production on the record, it's that the songs and melodies themselves are just kinda dull.

xp
harsh - I have the melody of Telephone Call and Sex Object stuck in my head at least once a week.
I see what you'er saying, despite really like EC, it does come off as a compilation of non-album singles or something. But then again, the overarching concept of Man-Machine is not very obvious.
On the live front, saw them 10 years ago, on the Min-Max tour and it was honestly the most awesome (quite literally) show I've ever attended. I had a blast, so at the end of the day who cares what they were fiddling with on their computers.

German Expressionist Cinema. Almost all of the songs on Man Machine (even the title of the album) hark back to Fritz Lang or the film Metropolis in some way!

(OK, not really, I kid. But humans + technology = cohesive whole is the theme there, duh)

The stuff I keep typing out and then deleting is much more about ... what it is that people *want* from a live performance?

Like, obviously, for a ton of people on this thread "perfect sound plus dazzling AV" is the recipe for an amazing experience. And for a ton of other people, it's more like "charismatic performers *performing* music that expresses their personalities in some way".

Like, for early 1970s Ralf, he was searching for performers who *could* express their personality musically:

http://endlesskraftwerk.tumblr.com/post/57997365944/what-has-changed-and-what-has-remained-one-of-the

^^^interview after he quit Kraftwerk the first time, and the reason he went back is very clear: that he couldn't find anyone better than Florian at expressing their personality through music.

The classic lineup was full of Characters. It was four people who were very charismatic and that showed in their performances. And somewhere along the line, Ralf started believing the line about Muzikarbeiters, and thinking that it didn't actually matter who performed a piece. When I think that he was right the first time, and the ability to have, and also project a distinct personality, even while playing in these theatrically constrained fashions. That was something that Karl and Wolfgang and Florian had, that these technician dudes, sorry Fritz and Henning and Technician Number 3, for all the dazzling sound and whizz-bang visuals, just do not have. That shit is Spectacle. It's entertaining, it's a full-on action movie. But it's a movie without any actors in it. If what you want from your Kraftwerk film is the characters, if you want a film with actual actors in it, it's not going to be satisfying.

I was kind of trying to write more about how the whole point of Kraftwerk, is that these are songs that have been de-peopled. The characters in Kraftwerk songs are not humans, they are cars and bicycles and data processors and nuclear power stations. Even when humans turn up, they're still somehow not *humans*; they're showroom dummies and robots and catwalk automatons for promoting consumerproducts.

But it's like Ralf thinks he can depopulate the performances, and it doesn't work. Watching 70s and early 80s Kraftwerk performances is fun because of the tension between these super-abstracted kabuki performances, and the way in which their personalities still spill out. That's the fun of the oft-posted clips of Pocket Calculator, where they come out from behind the machines, and though they're all in a uniform, and all doing "robot dances", the way they perform them is so unique and personal, even while being part of a harmonious group. Karl with his perfect face like a Stakanovite poster, and the disparity between the seriousness of his expression and the way his body jerks about like a puppet with its strings cut. Wolfgang kind of smirking at everyone with the sexual *knowingness* of the robot that is fingering your wife (sorry, joke from that other thread). Florian and his mad professor grins and the sheer kid on christmas morning joy of playing with gadgetry. The tension between group identity and individual identity makes the performance completely intriguing. To some people, *that* stuff matters in a way that perfect digital sound and whizz-bang 3D films matter to other people.

And this is not "nyeah, nyeah, authenticity blah blah, they're just miming, not the real people" because I'd happily watch Wolfgang or Florian miming all day - OR ANYONE WHO WAS A GOOD MIME - because the act that they are miming is interesting and funny.

ugh every time I post something to ILM I feel like I'm digging myself deeper into a hole but I just keep going because I'm dumb and I want to get this stuff out.

Even before they had 'proper' sequencers they could have taken a more faithful approach to the written material but live they were jamming fairly wildly up to at least '75. I mean it wasn't just about available (or otherwise) tech. It's where they were at. Or you could say they hadn't expunged their hippy jam band roots.

Branwell I'm loving yr posts on this thread, just saying

Aw, erm, thanks!

Also I just wanted to say (inspired by listening to the 40 minute Leverkusen version of Autobahn, followed by a 2015 version) that... all that technology (not to mention shitting up the bassline) and you STILL can't recreate that high little harmony on "Glitzerstrahl"?

No Glitzerstrahl, so Autobahn, AFAIC.

Yeah, and the bit where Ralf goes low on singing at the end of the "chorus", that's a "modern" change..

Branwell absolutely OTM here. It's not the same band and they don't sound remotely the same to my ears. It puzzles me that people going to see latter day Kraftwerk apparently don't notice that. All the maximalism on "Minimum - Maximum" is grotesque. Where is the minimalism? That said, I saw them on the The Mix tour and it was brilliant so I know the shows are fun. But that was 25 years ago and it felt like they were washed up even then. The stage was set up with all kinds of futuristic tech, which lit up like the bridge of the starship enterprise. When I see pics of them now, standing in line with laptops with a massive screen behind them, that looks really boring.

I'm going to see them on Sunday. stoked.

go, dance, have fun!

Dance? Have you been taking something?

I appreciate reading this discussion; and am also stoked to be going on Sunday. I have found that once I stopped playing so many shows, I was more able to have a 'fan' experience than I used to be; still, it's something that I have to put forth effort/suspend my own disbelief so that it can happen...because it's fun! I can always have artistic/moral turmoil after the fact.

I get that earlier Kraftwerk had a tension that's missing, like effortlessly achieving what used to be held together with effort and artistry lacks something. But it's honest and the music is amazing, and the shows have surprises. Instead of that tension now you get fragile human vocals over perfect machine music that sometimes erupts gorgeously. I think it's totally beautiful and inspiring.

It puzzles me that people going to see latter day Kraftwerk apparently don't notice that

Everyone does. But you don't have the choice to go see 1976 Kraftwerk.

When I see pics of them now, standing in line with laptops with a massive screen behind them, that looks really boring.

The fact that they just stand stock still while the music is exploding all around them is kind of the point? I'll stop now.

No-one goes to see Ringo Starr's Big Band and thinks they are seeing the Beatles but it's similarly one original member, some hired hands in costumes and a bunch of covers that don't sound much like the original.

I do not want to harsh the buzz of anyone going to see this band! Like, I fucking love this band (entirely too much, it's obvious) and I am not trying to diss them or represent them as terrible, just puzzling through a thing that troubles me. I am aware that there's a lot to enjoy, if you enjoy spectacle and technical precision.

I'm more wrestling with the idea of why *I* do not want to see them, now that they are touring so much. Not trying to tell other people that they should not enjoy them live!

Apart from the Glitzerstrahl. Man, that missing harmony really does feel like a betrayal of that song. Like, dude, you have got the damned harmoniser dialled up on your workstation in front of you. How hard can it be to just do the little harmony on the Glitzerstrahl.

Ralf Hütter & His All Hütter Band

Ütterly Hütterly

(Yes I know that's not how it's pronounced.)