Kraftwerk (pronounced [], German for "power station") is a German musical group from Düsseldorf that has made immense contributions to the development of improvisational rock and electronic music, most notably within the latter category's sub-genres which later became known as synthpop, electro, techno, house and IDM. Early musical templates formed within the industrial and hip hop music communities have also been credited to the group.

The Kraftwerk sound combines a driving rhythm section with catchy, synthesized melodies and harmony; mainly following a classical style of arrangement accompanied by simple lyrics which are sometimes sung through a vocoder or generated by computer speech software. The Moog synthesizer is heavily present in the majority of the group's works, adding to their signature sound creations. In the mid to late 1970s and the early 1980s, the Kraftwerk sound was revolutionary for its time, and it has had a lasting impact across nearly all genres of modern popular music.

Kraftwerk was founded in 1970 by Florian Schneider-Esleben (flute, synthesizers, electro-violin) and Ralf Hütter (electronic organ, synthesizers).The two had met as students at the Düsseldorf Conservatory in the late 1960s, participating in the German experimental music scene of the time, which the UK music press dubbed Krautrock. This term is said to be derogatory, although it has since become synonymous with most freeform German music of the period between the late 1960s to the early-mid 1970s. They formed due to the music the Beach Boys made that sounded like California and wanted to make music that sounded like Germany.

The duo had originally performed together in a quintet known as Organisation. This ensemble released one album, entitled, Tone Float for RCA Records in the UK. The unit split shortly thereafter.

The two visionaries began setting up its own private studio in a rented loft (which later became known as Kling Klang) in Düsseldorf. Early Kraftwerk line-ups (1970–1974) fluctuated, Hütter and Schneider working with around a half-dozen other musicians over the course of recording three 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 significant as well. 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 near 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 the band after the commercial success of Autobahn, apparently over a dispute about contracts.

Painter and graphic artist Emil Schult became a regular collaborator with the band beginning in 1973 (originally playing bass-guitar and electro-violin, then designing artwork, writing additional lyrics, and accompanying the outfit on tour).

What is generally regarded as the classic Kraftwerk line-up formed in 1975, for the Autobahn tour. During this time, the band was presented as a 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 renowned output of the latter 1970s and early 1980s. Flür had joined the band in 1973 as a drummer, in preparation for a television appearance to promote their third album. The group's striking custom-made electronic percussion pads, played by Flür, made their debut as well. Bartos and Flür also helped to write many of the band’s most memorable songs.

The band is notoriously reclusive, so much so that it is rumored that their label partner, EMI does not have their phone numbers. Another notable example of their eccentric behavior 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 the studio telephone did not have a ringer, since during recording the band did not like to hear any kind of noise pollution. Instead, callers were instructed to phone the studio precisely at a certain time, whereupon the phone would be answered by Ralf Hütter, despite himself never hearing the phone ring.

:“The telephone is an antiquity—you never know who is calling, there is no image, it is an outmoded product that constantly disrupts work.” ::— Ralf Hütter


After years of withdrawal from live performance, Kraftwerk began to tour again more regularly from 1990 onward, with the group's first appearances in the US and Japan in 1998 since the completion of the Computer World tour seventeen years earlier. 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 also 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 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, 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. Following the departure of Flür and Bartos, Kling Klang studio personnel Fritz Hilpert and Henning Schmitz have appeared in what some have called the second classic line-up of Kraftwerk which has been active from 1992 to the present.

A web site, http://www.kraftwerk.com/'>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 Web site now is accessible with either international (.com) or German (.de) suffixes. There also has been a separate merchandise site www.klingklang.com since Kraftwerk gained control of that domain name from a previous owner.

In July 1999, the single "Tour de France" was reissued in Europe after it had been out of print for several years. As most fans had wished, it was released for the first time on CD in addition to a re-press of the 12 inch vinyl single. Both versions feature slightly altered artwork that removed the faces of Flür and Bartos from the four man cycling peloton as depicted on the original cover. Also at this time, the group signed a new music publishing contract with Sony-ATV Music.

The single Expo 2000, the group's first new song in 13 years, was released in December 1999 and was subsequently remixed by contemporary techno musicians such as Underground Resistance and Orbital. It should be noted that the only artists permitted to remix the band’s recordings prior to that time were François Kevorkian and William Orbit.

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 and 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, its first album of new material since 1986's Electric Café.

In 2004, a box set entitled, "The Catalogue" was planned for release. It was to feature remastered editions of the group's albums from 1974's Autobahn to 2003's Tour de France Soundtracks. The item was soon withdrawn from Kraftwerk and EMI's album release schedule. It was only released as a promotional item on CD, which has become a much wanted item that has often appeared on internet auction sites such as eBay.. In 2007, the group had shown a renewed interest in releasing the collection, although an official street date has not been given.

In June 2005, the band’s first-ever official live album, Minimum-Maximum, which was compiled from the shows during the band's tour of spring 2004, 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. In December, the Minimum-Maximum 2-DVD set was released to accompany the album, featuring live footage of the band performing the Minimum-Maximum tracks in various venues all over the world. To many fans, this was a major shock noting that Hütter as early as 1975 stated that the group would release a "video disc as soon as it (the technology) is available in Germany". Prior to December 2005, the group had never released any of their video works or live performances commercially.

On September 21st 2007, Kraftwerk released a new single remixed by the UK Indie/Electro foursome Hot Chip. Included are remixes of the tracks "Aerodynamik" and "La Forme", both culled from Kraftwerk's "Tour de France Soundtracks" album released in 2003.

* Ralf Hütter – Hammond-organ, synthesizers, electronic instruments, lead-vocals. * Florian Schneider-Esleben – Synthesizers, electronic instruments, flutes, electro-violin, vocoder, background vocals. * Fritz Hilpert – Sound engineer, percussion (1987–). * Henning Schmitz – Sound engineer (1978-), percussion & keyboards (late 1991-).

Like many other Krautrock bands, Kraftwerk was heavily influenced by the pioneering compositions of Karlheinz Stockhausen; the minimalism and non-R&B rhythms of the Velvet Underground, as well as other radicals of the time, such as Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, and the hyper-adrenalized Stooges. Replacing drums and guitars with synthesized pulses and programmed beats, Kraftwerk expertly diverted the Velvets' speed rush into the metronomic rhythm that they are so well known for. Hütter has also listed the Beach Boys as a major influence, which is apparent in their 1975 chart smash, "Autobahn." Hütter and Schnieder were also fans of soul music, and later, developed an aesthetical affinity for punk music and American punk rock icons The Ramones.

Though most famous for its synth-pop albums, Kraftwerk began as a Krautrock jam band in the vein of Can or Neu! Its first three albums were more free-form experimental rock without the pop hooks or the more disciplined strong structure of their later work. Kraftwerk, released in 1970, and Kraftwerk 2, released in 1972, were mostly exploratory jam music, played on a variety of traditional instruments including guitar, bass, electric organ, flute, and violin. Post-production modifications to these recordings were then used to distort the sound of the instruments, particularly audio-tape manipulation and multiple dubbings of one instrument on the same track. Both albums are purely instrumental.

With Ralf und Florian, released in 1973, the band began to move closer to its classic sound, relying more heavily on synthesizers and drum machines. Although almost entirely instrumental, the album marks Kraftwerk's first use of the vocoder, which would, in time, become one of its musical signatures.

Their breakthrough, both critically and commercially, came in 1974 with the Autobahn album and its 22-minute title track, featuring the motorik beat (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 preceded a trio of albums that would exert a huge influence on popular music—Radio-Activity (1975), Trans-Europe Express (1977), and The Man-Machine (1978).

Kraftwerk's lyrics deal with post-war European urban life and technology—travelling by car on the Autobahn, travelling by train, using home computers, and the like. Usually, the lyrics are 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 was one of the first pop-oriented 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. In addition, a Texas Instruments Language Translator was used to generate synthetic speech on its 1981 album Computer World—not a Speak and Spell as is commonly believed (though its bleeps do occur at the beginning of "Home Computer"). It also pioneered the use of backing tracks that were generated by the electronic sequencing of purely synthetic sounds.

Notably, all of their albums from Radio-Activity onward have been recorded in separate versions: one with German vocals for sale in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, and one with English vocals for the rest of the world, with occasional variations in other languages when conceptually appropriate. The single "Tour de France" featured lyrics in French (as does the 2003 album Tour de France Soundtracks). 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 [it is] German, [it has] an English[-language] name, so [it creates] on-stage 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 behaviour. We create out of the German language, the mother-language, which is very mechanical; we use it as the basic structure of our music.

::— Ralf Hütter

This particluar quote caused a stir among some members of the public; Hütter later apologized and stated that it was not meant to be taken in a negative context. Speculatively, it could be implied that "forward thinking" or "future minded" was the general meaning and intention of the statement, as this has always been part of the Kraftwerk ethos and image from day one.

Live performance always has played an important part in Kraftwerk's activities. Also, despite its live shows generally being based around formal songs and compositions, live improvisation often plays a noticeable role in its performances. This trait can be traced back to the group’s roots in the experimental krautrock scene of the late 1960s, but significantly, it has continued to be a part of its playing even as it makes ever greater use of digital and computer-controlled sequencing in its performances. Some of the band's familiar compositions have been observed to have developed from live improvisations at their concerts or sound-checks.

Early in the group's career, between 1970 and 1974, the group made sporadic live appearances, mostly in its native Germany, with a variety of line-ups. A few of these performances were for television broadcasts. The only constant figure in these line-ups was Schneider, whose main instrument at the time was the flute, but who also played violin and guitar, processed through a varied array of electronic effects. Hütter (who left the band for six months in 1971 to pursue studies in architecture) played synthesizer keyboards (including Farfisa organ and electric piano). At least some of its performances were made as a duo, using a simple beat-box-type electronic drum machine with preset rhythms taken from an electric organ. Various other musicians who appeared on stage as part of the group during these years included Klaus Dinger (acoustic drums), Andreas Hohmann (acoustic drums), Michael Rother (electric guitar), Charly Weiss (drums), Eberhard Kranemann (bass guitar), Plato Kostic (bass guitar), Emil Schult (electro-violin, electric guitar), Klaus Roeder (electric violin, electric guitar), and Wolfgang Flür (electronic percussion).

Documentation of this period in the group's history is sparse, with Hütter and Schneider not keen to talk about it in interviews. A few bootleg recordings are in circulation. The only official released material is its 1971 performance on the German Beat Club TV show, which is available on DVD.

1975 saw a turning point in Kraftwerk's live shows. For the first time, with financial support from its record company, they were able to undertake a multi-date tour to promote the Autobahn album. This tour took them across the Atlantic to the USA for the first time. The tour also saw a new, stable, live line-up in the form of a quartet. Hütter and Schneider both mainly played keyboard parts on synthesizers such as the MiniMoog and ARP Odyssey, with Schneider's use of flute diminishing. The two of them also sang vocals on stage for the first time, with Schneider also using a vocoder live. Wolfgang Flür and new recruit Karl Bartos performed live electronic percussion using custom-made (and, at the time, unique) sensor pads hit with metal sticks to complete a circuit and trigger analog synthetic percussion circuits (initially cannibalized from the aforementioned organ beat box). Bartos also used a metallophone-like instrument.

Between 1975 and 1981, Kraftwerk toured regularly to accompany each of its album releases (the exception being for The Man-Machine), with the same Hütter-Schneider-Bartos-Flür line-up. Emil Schult generally fulfilled the role of tour manager. As this period progressed, the band's set focused increasingly on song-based material, with vocals, using less acoustic instrumentation, and increasing amounts of sequenced and automated electronic equipment for percussion and musical lines. Its approach generally was to use the sequencing equipment interactively, however, allowing them still to improvise. Flür was heavily involved in designing customized modular housing and packaging for the group's equipment, culminating in the Computer World tour of 1981, where the band effectively packed up its entire Kling Klang studio and took it on the road with them. The band also developed an increasing use of visual elements in the live shows during this period. This included back-projected slides and films, increasingly synchronized with the music as the technology developed, an experimental light-beam activated drum cage allowing Flür to trigger electronic percussion through arm gestures, use of hand-held miniaturized instruments during the set, and, perhaps most famously, the use of replica mannequins of themselves to perform onstage during the song "The Robots."

Several bootleg recordings of this period have been widely available, some even in major retail stores, particularly from the Autobahn and Computer World tours.

The completion of the 1981 Computer World tour then precipitated an almost decade-long hiatus in Kraftwerk's live activities. The unit did not perform again until 1990; by this time Flür had left the band three years earlier and was replaced by Fritz Hilpert. The next proper tour was in 1991, for the album The Mix. By that year, Bartos also had left the line-up. Hütter and Schneider wished to continue the synth-pop quartet style of presentation, and recruited Fernando Abrantes as a replacement for Bartos. Abrantes was dismissed from the group soon afterwards, however, most likely due to the fact that he lived in Portugal, making it hard for the rest of the outfit to work with him. At this point, Henning Schmitz was brought in to complete the new ensemble in 1992, which is the unit that still remains active to this day.

From this point, the band's equipment increasingly reduced manual playing, replacing it with interactive control of sequencing equipment. Hütter retains the most manual performance, still playing selected musical lines by hand on a controller keyboard and singing live vocals and having a repeating ostinato. Much of Schneider's live vocoding has been replaced by software-controlled speech-synthesis techniques. By 2002, the band was touring using four laptop computers, running all of its sequencing, sound-generating, and visual-display software. Back-projected computer-generated video, synchronized with the songs, was an increasingly integral component of the show. The band also continued to develop its robots, which by now featured computer-controlled mechanical pivoting limbs, allowing them to dance.

The increased availability and sophistication of portable digital recording equipment means that bootlegs from this period are numerous, despite the band's efforts to prevent such recordings. In 2005, the band released its first official live album, Minimum-Maximum, recorded on its 2004 world tour.

A DVD of their 2004 world tour, Minimum-Maximum (DVD), is also available.

Kraftwerk’s releases in the 1970s and early 1980s, most significantly Trans-Europe Express (1977) and Computer World (1981), directly influenced some of the first Electro hits. Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock” (1982) and Hashim’s “Al-Naafiysh (The Soul)" (1983) both contain elements of “Trans-Europe Express” and “Numbers”. The influence of Kraftwerk’s distinctive use of synthesizers, drum machine rhythms and heavily effected vocals can also be heard on early Detroit Techno records. Legendary Detroit Techno artists Derrick May and Juan Atkins adopted the use of the Roland TR-909 drum machine to replicate Kraftwerk’s sound on early Techno records, such as Cybotron’s “Clear”(1982), Model 500’s “No UFOs” (1985) and Derrick May’s “Strings of Life” (1987).

See main page: Kraftwerk discography

*1970: Kraftwerk *1972: Kraftwerk 2 *1973: Ralf und Florian *1974: Autobahn *1975: Radio-Activity (German title: Radio-Aktivität) *1977: Trans-Europe Express (German title: Trans-Europa Express) *1978: The Man-Machine (German title: Die Mensch-Maschine) *1981: Computer World (German title: Computerwelt) *1986: Electric Café *1991: The Mix (album of re-recorded back-catalogue) *2003: Tour de France Soundtracks *2005: Minimum-Maximum (live album – 2 CDs/4 LPs, 2 DVDs, also available as a special edition Notebook with an 88-page book) *TBA: The Catalogue (German title: Der Katalog) (remastered box set of albums from 1974 to 2003, to be released possibly in the future)

*1975: Exceller 8 (compilation of uniquely edited tracks from 1970–74) *1976: Doppelalbum (German compilation, with tracks from 1970–74) *1976: Pop Lions (German compilation) *1979: Highrail (German compilation, with tracks from 1970–74) *1981: Elektro-Kinetik - Reflections (UK compilation, with tracks from 1972–74) *1994: Three Originals - The Capitol Years (US box set released by Cleopatra Records) *1997: Klang Box (UK compilation box set of four 12" singles, with tracks from 1977–86) *1998: Concert Classics (live recording from the 1975 US tour)

*1973: Kohoutek-Kometenmelodie First Kraftwerk 7" single. Named after the comet "Kohoutek" *1975: Autobahn First single from Autobahn. Peaked at #11 in the UK charts *1974: Comet Melody 2 Second single from Autobahn. The track is an instrumental and was relased in Germany under it's original title of Kometenmelodie 2 *1976: Radio-Activity First and only single from Radio Activity. The track contains a mixture of both English and German vocals and was relased in German under it's original title of Radioaktivität *1977: Trans-Europe Express First single from Trans Europe Express. Also released as a German language version titled Trans Europa Express *1977: Showroom Dummies Second single from Trans Europe Express. Not released in Germany *1978: The Robots First single from The Man Machine. Also released as a German language version titled Die Roboter *1978: Das Model Second single from The Man Machine. Not released in UK *1979: Neon Lights Third single from The Man Machine Not released in Germany. English language version *1981: Pocket Calculator First single from Computer World. Also released as a German language version titled Taschenrechner , a Japanese version titled Dentaku and a French version titled Mini Calculateur *1981: Das Model Re -Release of 1978 track. Released in the UK as double A side containing The Model and Computer Love. Peaked at #1 in the UK charts *1981: Computerwelt Only available on 12". A special remix version not avaiable on Computer World) *1983: Tour de France Not availble on any Kraftwerk album. Released in both German and French language versions. Peaked at #22 on UK charts *1984: Tour de France Remix of 1983 single Peaked at #24 on UK charts *1986: Music Non-Stop First single from Electric Cafe. Released in English and German language versions *1987: The Telephone Call Second single from Electric Cafe. Released in English and German language versions *1991: The Robots First single from The Mix. Re-recorded version of 1978 track. Released in English and German language versions *1991: Radioactivity Second single from The Mix. Re-recorded version of 1976 track. Released in English and German language versions *1999: Expo 2000 Single released to promote Expo 2000 in Hanover *2003: Tour de France 03 First single from Tour De France Soundtracks. Re-recording of 1983 track *2004: Aerodynamik Second single from Tour De France Soundtracks *2007: Aerodynamik/La Forme Remix by Hot Chip''''

* 1975 : Autobahn (from "Autobahn") * 1975 : Radio-Activity (from "Radio-Activity") * 1976 : Antenna (from "Radio-Activity") * 1977 : Trans-Europe Express (from "Trans-Europe Express") * 1977 : Showroom Dummies (from "Trans-Europe Express") * 1978 : The Robots (from "The Man-Machine") * 1978 : The Model (from "The Man-Machine") * 1978 : Neon Lights (from "The Man-Machine") * 1983 : Tour de France * 1986 : Music Non-Stop (from "Electric Café") * 1987 : The Telephone Call (from "Electric Café") * 1991 : The Robots (from "The Mix") * 2000 : Expo 2000 * 2000 : Expo (Orbital Remix) * 2003 : Tour de France (from "Tour de France Soundtracks")

* Organisation - Tone Float (1970) * El Baile Alemán - Señor Coconut album consisting of Latin-style covers of Kraftwerk songs. * 8-Bit Operators: The Music of Kraftwerk - Chiptune covers of Kraftwerk songs, released on the Astralwerks label.

Official Kraftwerk links: * Kraftwerk.com – The official Kraftwerk web site. * Kraftwerk on MySpace - The official Kraftwerk MySpace site. * Capitolmusic.de – Capitol/EMI Records' Kraftwerk web site (Germany). * Astralwerks Records – Kraftwerk web site of their EMI-owned US label.

Other associates: * emilschult.com – Website of artist Emil Schult. * Klaus-Roeder.org – Website of avant-garde classical guitarist Klaus Röder, former Kraftwerk member. * Early Kraftwerk – Former associate Eberhard Kranemann reminisces about the Düsseldorf music scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Further information: * Kraftwerk International Discography – Comprehensive list of official releases worldwide. * Kraftwerk FAQ.com – The Kraftwerk FAQ: Frequently asked questions and answers. *