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Kraftwerk
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Kraftwerk is from Dusseldorf, Germany. Founding members Ralf Hutter and Florian Schnieder released an album in 1968 named Tone Float. It featured 5 experimental tracks, the longest of them being the 20:45 title track. The album is not in general release, and only a few original copies remain in circulation (be prepared to pay top dollar if you see one). The band's name at that stage was Kraftwerk-Organisation.
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When Kraftwerk was founded, it was originally as Organisation, who put out one record, Tone Float, which was more experimental jazz in nature; closest to the first three Kraftwerk albums, though with more of a natural sound. When they became Kraftwerk, they got more into electronics, but it was by their fourth record that they became closer to the Kraftwerk people think of. They've been sampled a lot and were a huge influence on electronic music of all stripes. Spin even did an article "Kraftwerk: More Important Than The Beatles". They went through a long hiatus, between their last three records; Electric Café was 1986, The Mix was 1991 (between which, the two percussionists left), and Tour De France Soundtracks was 2004.
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There's no good reason to explore once again the influence that Kraftwerk has had on any number of electronic bands producing music today. Techno, trance, EBM, IDM, and a nigh-infinite number of other acronyms owe a debt of gratitude to Messrs Hütter, Schneider, Hilpert and Schmitz. These guys were doing it in the mid-'70s, and if the rip-roaring success of their recent spat of live shows is any indication, they'll be doing it in the mid-'10s, too. Given the success of the live dates, it became obvious that yes, now, 35 years into their career, is the perfect time to release the first live album in the history of Kraftwerk.
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In 1990, after years of withdrawal from live performance, Kraftwerk began to tour Europe again regularly. In 1998, the group made their first appearances in the US and Japan, since the completion of the Computer World tour in 1981. Hütter had wanted to play more shows over the years, but the cost and time involved in shipping all of the group's huge, analog equipment hindered world tours and travel outside of Europe. The band ... ran into problems with customs officials in the Eastern Bloc region, with some of them fearing that the group's older computers at the time would trigger nuclear devices by mistake. During this decade, the band often stated that it was working on new material—though speculation about release dates fell through several times. The growing time between recordings, the rarity of live performances, Hütter and Schneider's alleged obsession with cycling, and the increasingly exacting and protracted nature of the recording process were the major reasons behind the departure of Flür and soon after Bartos, whose improvisations and songwriting capabilities were an essential part of Kraftwerk's later recordings.
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Kraftwerk took the synthesiser and made it an explicitly rhythmic instrument. They were the first, and in usurping the traditional drum kit with electronic beats they fundamentally changed modern music. Like the Berlin-based Tangerine Dream, the music of their formative years was inspired by Pink Floyd and a host of classical avant-garde sources including minimalist composer Terry Riley and, particularly, fellow German Karl Stockhausen. But while many of the Berlin bands explored psychedelia, over Cologne way Kraftwerk chose the path of clarity. They made electronica rhythmic and precise. The music was a both a powerful reflection of the industrial environment of their Dusseldorf home and a remarkably prescient vision of the coming techno and computer age.
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A series of lineup shifts followed, and at one point Hütter even left the group; ... by the release of 1972\'s Kraftwerk 2, he and Schneider were again working in tandem. Recorded without a live drummer, the album\'s rhythms relied solely on a drum machine, creating a distinctly robotic feel without precedent -- the concept of purely technological music was, at the time, utterly alien to most musicians, as well as listeners. A series of well-received live performances followed before Kraftwerk began work on their breakthrough third LP, 1973\'s Ralf and Florian; honing their many ambitions down to a few simple yet extraordinarily innovative concepts, their music began growing more and more revelatory -- even their clean-cut, scientific image was in direct opposition to the dominant pop fashions of the time. Kraftwerk\'s first album to be issued in the U.S., 1974\'s Autobahn was an international smash; an edited single version of the epic title track was a major hit at home and abroad, and in America the previously unknown group reached the upper rungs of the pop albums chart. Performed in large part on a Moog synthesizer, Autobahn crystallized the distinctive Kraftwerk sound while making the group\'s first clear overtures towards conventional pop structure and melody, establishing a permanent foothold for electronic music within the mainstream.
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