Kraftwerk and You

I could see thinking Kraftwerk was boring if you demanded scissor- kicking, guitar-hero posing and pyrotechnics with your music.

I think it would certainly be considered boring to anyone who grew up in the late 80s or 90s, and grew up with rich and more complicated electronic music like Orbital or The Orb or what have you: definitely minimalist from that standpoint, and if you're used to sensory overload because you're a member of the MTV generation, yes, it's going to be boring. But that's not the music, it's really your expectations.

And I know it’s boring but the records just sound fantastic. Busy but spacey, clean but warm, stiff yet funky. I guess it’s the blend of heartbreaking and groundbreaking I love about them.

And I love CW more than TEX, too. I lump the latter (except for the title track) in with the earlier stuff, where they were still fooling around, trying to find their sound. CW and the MM are their masterpieces.

I love Computerworld and it’s funky melancholy. The usual criticism about Kraftwerk i.e. cold, distant, inhuman just seems to me to be about as far from the truth as you can get and esp. on that LP.

Yeah all that stuff - cos Kraftwerk aren't about the future, they're about pre-WWII modernism, as opposed to postmodernism, they refer backwards, not forwards, they are not modern. (Sorry about confusing terms, but I want to say 'they are not modern' meaning they are not recent because the sentence 'I am not modern' was used in a good book and I want to quote the sources of my ideas.) They are not modern, so they are right for some people. Not-modern people. Also they are kind of Buddhist, and into nature. They are into the equivalence of nature and machine, not the superiority of technology. This is obvious just from listening. These are all things that I think get overlooked. I have more to say, but I have to go. Another useful idea from Kraftwerk is treating machines well, not as slaves.

An ambitious reissue of the first three Krafwerk albums would be fun, I imagine.

I don't want to sound trite but I live in the countryside and although it's beautiful and moving (I'd quite happily lose myself in the hills if it weren't for FMD), the thing which thrills me the most is on the way to my work is a large bend and in the winter the way the streetlights appear to move as I drive round the bend sets me up for my day at work.

Essentially nature can be beautiful, awesome, devastating whatever but it's human endeavours (and by extension the harnessing of technology) that is the most thrilling.

It's probably become a terrible cliche by now, but Kraftwerk have always seemed to me like the first band to elevate the electronic, the modern, the urban, to the level of Romantic worship that Wordsworth and all those who followed had / have for the countryside. In doing so, they set a path which perhaps could never have been followed once computers were just there, and once we could all think within ourselves that we lived in cities, and that's where the melancholia comes from.

God Bless Kraftwerk

Seems that Florian is not playing the current US dates, a member of the roadcrew has taken his place.

Thanks Alex!

Can we talk about Minimum-Maximum, the recent double live album?

Absolutely stunning.

Recent, as in 3 years old? :-) (ok, in Kraftwerk-time, that's last week)

The DVDs are brilliant as well!

Absolutely stunning

i agree -- the visual and musical performance is sublime ...

... except "the model", which sounds awful, like they retooled it as a demonstration tune for a casio keyboard. there's something leaden and cheesy about the actual sound of it, which really upsets me.

also: no "computer love". pah.

i'm going to see them on Wednesday (in Denver!) Excited!

Initially pegging them as a "Devo rip-off"

haha nice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GTrMzYhlG8&feature=related

This is maybe off topic but this is my favourite Kraftwerk performance:

http://youtu.be/SqTOwBnNNfc