tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/kraftwerk-14750/articlesKraftwerk – The Conversation2020-05-08T09:35:16Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1381872020-05-08T09:35:16Z2020-05-08T09:35:16ZFlorian Schneider and Kraftwerk helped shape the sound of modern music<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333654/original/file-20200508-49573-1jkyt4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C35%2C5964%2C3332&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter: pioneering use of synthesizers in pop music.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kraft74 via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are few bands whose influence was such that it can unequivocally be said that modern music would sound different without them. Kraftwerk, co-founded by <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-52564281">Florian Schneider</a>, whose recent death at the age of 73 was announced on May 6, was one such act. The band left an indelible imprint on the sound of popular music by bringing synthesised instruments to the forefront and electronics into the mainstream.</p>
<p>Schneider trained as a flautist <a href="https://thequietus.com/articles/11542-karl-bartos-interview-kraftwerk">at the Dusseldorf Conservatory</a>, which might seem an odd background for a musician whose work did so much to shape the synth-pop and electronic dance music of the 1980s and beyond. But he and band-mate Ralf Hütter – an alumnus of the same music school – exemplified an exploratory approach to music making that traverses musical fields. </p>
<p>Emerging initially from an experimental milieu, their early albums were free-form improvisations that mixed electronic and traditional instruments. Alongside other German electronic acts, including Can and Neu!, they came to represent “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2010/mar/30/elektronische-musik-krautrock">krautrock</a>” (as English critics dubbed it) or “Kosmische Musik” (‘cosmic music’, a term used by the German muscians).</p>
<p>The big breakthrough for Kraftwerk (the name means “power plant”) came with the release in 1974 of their fourth album Autobahn. The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-G28iyPtz0">title track</a> was a sonic depiction of the modernity of long-distance highway travel in their native Germany. Imbued with the sound effects of cars and horns, you could find distant echoes in the lyrics of the driving songs of Beach Boys and Chuck Berry. The album was a Top 10 hit, in Germany, the US and the UK, with a radio edit of the title track – 21 minutes long on the album – confounding expectations by <a href="https://www.officialcharts.com/artist/23701/kraftwerk/">charting as a single</a> in the UK, US, Australia and the Netherlands.</p>
<p>Although some acoustic instruments could still be heard, Autobahn saw the band’s line-up stabilise around Schneider, Hütter and percussionists <a href="https://electronicsound.co.uk/news/review-wolfgang-flur-london/">Wolfgang Flür</a> and <a href="http://www.karlbartos.com/biography/karl.html">Karl Bartos</a>. Its sound crystallised into something precise, evocative, human and yet simultaneously uncanny, laid over rhythmic grooves created with customised electronic instruments.</p>
<h2>Influencing the influencers</h2>
<p>While subsequent albums, including Radioactivity, Trans-Europe Express and The Man Machine, performed respectably – if not earth-shatteringly – in the commercial realm, Kraftwerk’s true impact was not so much about blazing a trail through the charts as expanding the parameters of popular music and opening up the ears of a generation of innovators to new possibilities. David Bowie’s late 1970s albums recorded in Berlin were <a href="https://www.davidbowie.com/blog/2020/5/6/bowie-on-kraftwerk-and-his-florian-tribute">heavily indebted to Kraftwerk</a>, and he name-checked its co-founder on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miiV8WFcdwg">V-2 Schneider</a> from Heroes.</p>
<p>Electronically synthesized instruments weren’t new, but had often been regarded as the preserve of experimenters on the commercial fringe, of the soundtrack artists in the more rarefied environs of the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/39f0d457-37ba-43b9-b0a9-05214bae5d97">BBC Radiophonic Workshop</a>, or as a kind of novelty. Their presence in rock music was tolerated, but rarely celebrated or centralised until Kraftwerk.</p>
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<span class="caption">I’m the operator: Florian Schneider in Ferrara, Italy in 2005.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniele Dalledonne via Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Schneider and Hütter paved the way for pop that used electronics as a foundation, rather than a garnish, and cleared the way for the likes of Gary Numan, Depeche Mode and the Human League in the 1980s.</p>
<p>But their shadow was cast much wider than the straight line of synth-driven pop. The exactitude of their tracks, and sonic distinctiveness, made them ideal fodder for the sampling that was emerging as a recording practice. Their songs Numbers and Trans-Europe Express served as the lynchpin of Afrika Bambaata’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rlUQsC8ECk">Planet Rock</a> at the roots oft the roots of hip-hop. Likewise, techno pioneer Derrick May <a href="https://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/derrick-may-it-is-what-it-isnt">has been explicit</a> about their extensive influence on the formation of the genre. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t3r3makyc4">He would recall their popularity</a> with the originators of techno in Detroit: “They were doing this thing that was from another planet … everybody latched onto Kraftwerk.”</p>
<h2>Enriching pop’s sonic vocabulary</h2>
<p>Key to their impact, and their work, was that they operated at a tangent to the pop world, as they had with the world of classical music. Their robotic stage act allowed them to eschew the celebrity game and the band, Schneider in particular, tended to be reticent about giving interviews in later years. Running their own studio: Kling Klang – their “electronic garden” as they called it – along with control of their business affairs allowed them to exercise aesthetic autonomy. <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZVDVrWyAk2YC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Kraftwerk+%E2%80%93+Music+Non-Stop&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjUrJ_jxKLpAhXRoXEKHVXgB2AQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=cola&f=false">As they told biographer Pascal Bussy in 2004</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have invested in our machines, we have enough money to live, that’s it. We can do what we want, we are independent, we don’t do cola adverts, even if we might have been flattered by such proposals, we never accepted.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Their emphasis was on constructing sounds, first and foremost, with an omnivorous approach to source materials and subject matter. “We make compositions from everything,” <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/twentieth-century-music/article/vox-electronica-nostalgia-irony-and-cyborgian-vocalities-in-kraftwerks-radioaktivitat-and-autobahn/1C00E976FAEF6C9ADF45DBA5AA6C71AA">Hütter told journalst Sylvain Gire</a>. “All is permitted, there is no working principle, there is no system.” Mass appeal, it turned out, was a byproduct.</p>
<p>There’s a degree of irony in a band so tangentially concerned with pop so definitively reshaping it. Their singular approach has yet to be replicated, even as its echoes resound across pop, rock and dance music. </p>
<p>What makes them distinctive is that they didn’t just stand at a crossroads between different generic approaches, but uncovered those pathways, growing popular music’s sonic vocabulary and revealing its boundless capacity for incorporating new ideas.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138187/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Behr has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council </span></em></p>A classically trained musician, Schneider influenced a generation of musicians from David Bowie to hip hop.Adam Behr, Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/781382017-06-01T10:50:25Z2017-06-01T10:50:25ZSee them to believe it: why Kraftwerk is the world’s most influential band<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171783/original/file-20170601-25673-x61vgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andriy Makukha</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Are Kraftwerk more influential than the Beatles? It’s a difficult question to decide – for obvious reasons. The Beatles were brilliant, groundbreaking and influential. But after a mere seven years of glory and genius, the band was spent – and they split. Kraftwerk, on the other hand, are still going strong in their 47th year of existence. And they have a new record out now – or actually eight new records, as well as their first UK tour in 14 years.</p>
<p>Rewind to 1974. Late November of that year, saw the release of Kraftwerk’s fourth album, Autobahn. The entire A-side was taken up by the title track, a 22-minute electronic composition about driving on the German motorway. While the album was largely met with disinterest in their native country at the time, as we now know, Autobahn would end up forever <a href="https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2015/01/kraftwerk-did-more-to-shape-modern-music-than-anyone-since-the-beatles/">changing the course of 20th century popular music</a>. </p>
<p>After Elvis’s move, as a white man, to sing the songs of black America, Kraftwerk initiated the second paradigm shift in popular music: to do away with drums and guitars by replacing them with synthesizers and music machines.</p>
<p>For a long time, <a href="http://www.uncut.co.uk/features/kraftwerk-autobahn-new-era-electronic-music-like-artificial-joke-91136">it was believed</a> that Autobahn was the first bona-fide piece of purely electronic pop music. But that wasn’t quite true – founder member Florian Schneider plays his flute on the track and, if you listen carefully, you can also hear a bit of guitar playing. Still, the Germans from Düsseldorf opened a new pathway to a future dominated by electronic pop music. The very future, that has become so much a hallmark of music’s here and now.</p>
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<h2>Man machine</h2>
<p>When a radio friendly three-minute version of Autobahn began to climb up the US charts, the band embarked on their blazing tour of the US and used a very curious poster to advertise their concert dates – dominated by a retro-futuristic image of an urban cityscape, it was strongly reminiscent of Fritz Lang’s expressionist <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/mar/15/metropolis-fritz-lang-philip-french-classic-dvd">film classic Metropolis</a>. It proudly introduced the band, in German, as “Kraftwerk – Die Mensch Maschine” (Man Machine). </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170332/original/file-20170522-25020-msicyd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170332/original/file-20170522-25020-msicyd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170332/original/file-20170522-25020-msicyd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170332/original/file-20170522-25020-msicyd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170332/original/file-20170522-25020-msicyd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170332/original/file-20170522-25020-msicyd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170332/original/file-20170522-25020-msicyd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">‘Man Machine’ neatly sums up Kraftwerk’s ethos.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>What at first glance only seems to anticipate their 1978 album title Mensch-Maschine (released as Man Machine for English-speaking territories) is also proof that from the moment Kraftwerk reinvented themselves as pioneers of electronic pop music, they also devised an overarching, all-encompassing aesthetic, based on the artistic concept of the man-machine. Step by step, album by album Kraftwerk would construct what is called a <a href="http://www.interlude.hk/front/richard-wagners-concept-of-the-gesamtkunstwerk/">“Gesamtkunstwerk”</a> in German: a total work of art as first devised by Richard Wagner in an attempt to combine all aspects of the arts into a new fusion.</p>
<p>A century after Wagner, Kraftwerk set out to do the same thing – as founding member Ralf Hütter <a href="http://edmontonjournal.com/entertainment/music/preview-the-man-behind-kraftwerks-machines">explained to an interviewer</a> in 2015: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We come from the late ‘60s, from the art scene in Düsseldorf, and we have always been a combination of visual arts, music, sound, poetry […] Our music has always been a living performance. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>How Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk panned out artistically can be seen at the annual festival performances of the Ring des Nibelungen opera cycle at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. The vision which inspired Kraftwerk’s futuristic take on an immersive “living performance” may be experienced at leading museums, opera houses and symphony halls across the globe, including the MoMA in New York, London’s Tate Modern, the Neue Nationalgallerie Berlin or the Burgtheater in Vienna.</p>
<h2>Look back in 3D</h2>
<p>Following the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/jan/06/florian-schneider-quits-kraftwerk">departure of Florian Schneider in 2009</a>, Hütter has taken Kraftwerk on a seemingly neverending tour to stage retrospectives of their catalogue of albums since Autobahn.</p>
<p>Each evening is devoted to one of their eight albums, and the shows are breathtaking and spectacular. The music, delivered by a 40-channel cutting-edge sound system based on wave field synthesis technology (which creates virtual sound sources that can move freely through the auditorium) is loud and crisp, while the latest 3D technology is used for the visuals that are closely synchronised with the music.</p>
<p>Audience members will experience, among other things, musical notes emanating out of a car radio during Autobahn which seemingly fly right into one’s face, or hear the Trans Europe Express rattling around the concert venue. During Tour de France, cyclists seem to whizz by right and left through the auditorium.</p>
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<p>On stage, meanwhile, 70-year-old Hütter and his three bandmates in their uniform outfits stand mostly motionless behind their four uniform consoles like laboratory operators – making it hard for the audience to discern who is playing what on which piece of electronic equipment. Contrary to persistent rumours, Kraftwerk do indeed play live as the occasional, all-too-human mistakes prove. </p>
<p>Kraftwerk delivers a famously minimalist stage show, although there is an appearance by four robot dummies – identical to the band members on stage – for the song The Robots. This overwhelming fusion of sound and vision as experienced by the audience is the fully-developed embodiment of the man-machine concept introduced in the mid-1970s. </p>
<p>Tickets for the UK and Ireland tour, which begins on June 2 in Dublin, were sold out within minutes. But for those without tickets there is the box set, which was released on May 26. This comprises the band’s major albums from Autobahn to their most recent studio offering, 2004’s Tour de France – in live versions recorded from 2012 to 2016.</p>
<p>Challenging the very notion of “original album version”, these live re-recordings enable us to listen to their groundbreaking tracks in the way they were always meant to sound: as contemporary music of the future. The new box set also acts as an apt reminder that while other bands, such as the Beatles or Rolling Stones, were undoubtedly huge in terms of sales, they were just doing better what everyone else was doing at the time. </p>
<p>Kraftwerk, on the other hand, established an entirely new way to think about how popular music should sound to make it a dominant art form for the 21st century. But make no mistake – you have to see (and hear) Kraftwerk on stage to believe that they are the greatest sounding band on earth.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78138/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Uwe Schütte does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The German band laid the foundations for the electronic pop revolution which continues today.Uwe Schütte, Reader in German, Aston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/376072015-03-03T15:51:00Z2015-03-03T15:51:00ZBjörk at MoMA – the line between art and music is becoming ever more blurred<p>“If I were to say who influenced me most, I would say people like Stockhausen, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-i-want-to-offer-a-university-course-on-kraftwerk-36160">Kraftwerk</a>, Brian Eno and Mark Bell,” Björk told Mark Pytlik for his <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AbNWPgAACAAJ&dq">biography</a> of the Icelandic musician. An intriguing, if not altogether surprising, group. It not only name-checks some of the most important musical figures of the past 70 years, but also provides a template with which to understand Björk.</p>
<p>I’m not just talking in musical terms. Björk may be a musician but she has a much broader aesthetic than music – to the extent that an <a href="http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1501">exhibition about her</a> is shortly opening at MoMA. At the heart of such a show is the question of where the boundaries between art and music lie.</p>
<p>Her influences tell us a lot about why and how this is the case with her work. German electronic music pioneer Stockhausen was most active in the 1950s and 60s. He certainly inspired Kraftwerk and Eno to redefine the confines of popular music in the 1970s. Bell, a key figure in the development of techno and house music in the UK in the 1990s, essentially fused Eno’s ambient music with Kraftwerk’s melody-driven synthesised beats. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/73787/original/image-20150304-15272-xr405r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/73787/original/image-20150304-15272-xr405r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/73787/original/image-20150304-15272-xr405r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73787/original/image-20150304-15272-xr405r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73787/original/image-20150304-15272-xr405r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73787/original/image-20150304-15272-xr405r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73787/original/image-20150304-15272-xr405r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73787/original/image-20150304-15272-xr405r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Björk, Volta, 2007.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photography by Nick Knight. Image courtesy of Wellhart Ltd & One Little Indian</span></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>Stockhausen (indirectly) and Bell (directly, as Björk’s producer from 1997 until his death in late 2014) can be regarded as highly influential in cultivating the Björk soundscape.</p>
<h2>Multifaceted</h2>
<p>But Kraftwerk and Eno have probably had a more diverse, profound and even dynamic impact. Both have long histories of exploring the connections between music and art. They are equally at home in art spaces and galleries as they are in concert halls and recording studios. Music is only one facet of their oeuvre. </p>
<p>Kraftwerk collaborated with artists, Eno creates photography, installations and digital art. They both work with film and video, and have given <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b050rbzb">live performances as living art</a>. This idea of the living artwork seems to be very much at the heart of the MoMA rationale for the Björk exhibition, which it describes as: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A retrospective of the multifaceted work of composer, musician, and singer… To chronicle her career through sound, film, visuals, instruments, objects, and costumes.</p>
</blockquote>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/73788/original/image-20150304-15276-1stnayk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/73788/original/image-20150304-15276-1stnayk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/73788/original/image-20150304-15276-1stnayk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73788/original/image-20150304-15276-1stnayk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73788/original/image-20150304-15276-1stnayk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73788/original/image-20150304-15276-1stnayk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73788/original/image-20150304-15276-1stnayk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/73788/original/image-20150304-15276-1stnayk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Björk, The Face, 1993.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Glen Luchford</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>This is not the first time MoMA has recognised the margins of culture inhabited by some musicians. In 2012, there was the exhibition <a href="http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1257">Kraftwerk – Retrospective 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8</a>. There were eight live shows, each featuring the music of a different album. Each performed to sell-out audiences. The same format was used by Tate Modern in London for another eight sell-out performances in February 2013. </p>
<p>Of course, there’s an argument that Kraftwerk has always defied constructs of what constitutes a popular music act or even a rock band; it has always been more of an arts collective. Its members built their own instruments. They never gave press interviews. They refused to be photographed, and used dummies for photoshoot clones. Their stage performances were carefully constructed. They collaborated with artists for album art work (Emil Shult created the iconic <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1a/A74-D-front-250.jpg">cover for Autobahn</a>) and music videos (Rebecca Allen used state-of-the-art facial animation software for the film that accompanied the 1986 single <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0lIlROWro8">Musique Non-Stop</a>).</p>
<p>The art world finally took notice around the turn of the millennium when Tokyo’s Metropolitan Museum of Photography featured an exhibition on the making of Allen’s film in late 2002. This was what initiated the art world’s exploration of the interface between art and music.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/O0lIlROWro8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Three artistic poles</h2>
<p>Like Kraftwerk, Eno refutes the rock star cliché. The early years with Roxy Music merely established the platform from which he was able to create a variety of work. He can now be considered a composer, sound technician, session musician, musical collaborator, record producer, visual artist, social and cultural commentator. </p>
<p>With Kraftwerk and other electronic musicians such as Tangerine Dream, Vangelis and Jean Michel Jarre, he helped form the musical landscape of the 1980s and beyond. He also began creating photography and art installations in the 1970s and his work has been exhibited widely across the globe. </p>
<p>Roy Ascott <a href="http://www.chroniclebooks.com/titles/brian-eno-visual-music.html">has remarked</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Any attempt to locate Brian Eno’s (art) work within an historical framework calls for a triple triangulation, whose trig points in the English tradition would seem to be Turner/Elgar/Blake; in Europe, Matisse/Satie/Bergson, and in the United States, Rothko/La Monte Young/Rorty.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This three-pointed allusion embraces artists, musicians and philosophers. At the edge of music you find a border country, as much cultivated by the visual aspect of music making, and the pop star as cultural icon, as it is to the desire to explore multiple creative forms. </p>
<p>From Elvis Presley forward, the performance and marketing of music has always relied on a visual aesthetic. But it is not only the record company or concert promoter, more concerned with the commercial imperative of the product on sale, who has been preoccupied with the packaging of music and musicians. Starting with the Beatles in the mid-1960s, musicians themselves became more interested with image; not just their appearance (on and offstage) but with how their broader persona was presented and what it represented. </p>
<p>The trend began with album covers as genuine works of art (Peter Blake’s 1967 collage for the Sgt Pepper’s album) and soon evolved into elaborate stage costumes (Arthur Brown), and ultimately, into exotic alter egos (David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, whose costumes featured among the exhibits at last year’s V&A retrospective of Bowie’s stage creations). </p>
<p>Some musicians even insisted on fashioning their own album covers, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell chief among them. Dylan has exhibited his paintings and sculptures in galleries worldwide, including the National Portrait Gallery in London. </p>
<p>Film was also used to cultivate and enhance image: look at the proto-videos for Dylan’s 1965 single Subterranean Homesick Blues or, a decade later, Queen’s global phenomenon Bohemian Rhapsody. Videos themselves were the main drivers of sales throughout the 1980s, initiating the MTV age, before digital technologies enabled a more holistic multimedia approach, particularly in terms of live performance. </p>
<p>Björk seems to embody all of this. The four musicians she mentioned to Pytlik are surely just one aspect of her inspiration and ambition. As the New York show will no doubt prove, with its showcasing of music as well as album covers, videos and costumes, Björk’s work references Bowie’s performance art and Eno’s extending of aesthetics, just as much as German electronic music. What will happen next in these borderlands, we’ll have to see – but it’s an extremely exciting prospect.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37607/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Allan Boughey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Björk may be a musician but she has a much broader aesthetic than music, as her influences attest.Allan Boughey, Lecturer in Journalism, Edinburgh Napier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/361602015-02-04T06:02:01Z2015-02-04T06:02:01ZWhy I want to offer a university course on Kraftwerk<p>If there is one band in the world that deserves intellectual exploration, it has to be <a href="http://www.kraftwerk.com">Kraftwerk</a>. Founded in 1970 in Düsseldorf, the two founding members, Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, forever changed the course of popular music with their concept of an <em>industrielle Volksmusik</em> (industrial people’s music) made by machines. </p>
<p>Their electronic future music – take a look at albums such as <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/the-man-machine-mw0000650384">Die Mensch-Maschine</a> (The Man-Machine, 1978) or <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/computer-world-mw0000199024">Computerwelt</a> (Computer World, 1981) – provided the blueprint for today’s music in all its glory, from chart pop via rap to dance music. Kraftwerk’s future music has indeed become the sound of our present.</p>
<p>Because I’m so convinced by this, I would like to develop a university course on Kraftwerk. It would captivate students to learn about German 20th-century history and culture by studying a band many may not have heard of. Here’s how I would set this out – and why I think it is so worth studying.</p>
<h2>History by Kraftwerk</h2>
<p>The first sessions would lay the historical and socio-political foundations. German society, after the defeat of the Nazis, carried on as if nothing had happened. But a new generation emerged, looking for a new definition of what it means to be German. They wanted to develop a new national identity, not tainted by the fascist crimes. Entwined with this is the need for a new kind of music that does not just copy Anglo-American models. And so Krautrock emerges – a new type of spaced-out music beyond the parameters of Anglo-American rock.</p>
<p>Kraftwerk, here, is a perfect case to study the process in which cultural change occurs in direct reaction to social shifts.</p>
<iframe src="https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:album:0DzC0tyowMi2O9QfkDRvfJ" width="100%" height="380" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true"></iframe>
<p>For their first three albums, published between 1970 and 1973, Kraftwerk sounded not unlike their Krautrock peers. But then, in 1974, the shift happens: with <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/autobahn-mw0000195085">Autobahn</a> Kraftwerk truly give birth to a new kind of music, which they dub “techno pop”. </p>
<p>Students on my Kraftwerk course would be invited to undertake a “close hearing” of the 22-minute epic, analysing its structure and sound components. They would look at the adaptation of avant-garde strategies such as found sounds or the postmodernist <em><a href="http://ronosaurusrex.com/metablog/2010/11/10/the-mirror-in-the-text-part-ii-mise-en-abyme/">mis-en-abyme</a></em> that occurs when – within the track which simulates a car journey – a car radio is switched on, playing Autobahn.</p>
<p>The 1974 cover image, too, is worth investigating. Why is the autobahn so eerily devoid of cars? And is there any symbolism involved in the fact that the grey Volkswagen Beetle – identical with the model owned by the band at the time – is travelling ahead, towards the future, while the black Mercedes, favoured car model of the ruling elite of West Germany, drives towards the viewer, and hence into the direction of the past?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70943/original/image-20150203-25520-rperll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70943/original/image-20150203-25520-rperll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70943/original/image-20150203-25520-rperll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70943/original/image-20150203-25520-rperll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70943/original/image-20150203-25520-rperll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70943/original/image-20150203-25520-rperll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70943/original/image-20150203-25520-rperll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">1974 Autobahn.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thejcgerm/4550606402/in/photolist-5SGDbH-7W83K5">thejcgerm</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Back to the future</h2>
<p>Over the next few sessions, we would look at the four concept albums from the second half of the 1970s. These constitute the core of their output. They also reflect and represent a chronicle of West German post-war history and politics – the rise of environmentalism as encapsulated in <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/radio-aktivit%C3%A4t-mw0000462593">Radio-Aktivität</a> (Radio-Activity, 1975), Germany’s role at the forefront of European unification (<a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/trans-europe-express-mw0000194538">Trans-Europe Express</a>, 1977), the confrontation of technology and tradition as explored in Mensch-Maschine (1978) or the digitisation of society as uncannily predicted already in 1981 by Computerwelt.</p>
<p>Computerwelt in particular is a prime example for the prophetic quality that haunts much of Kraftwerk’s music. After all, they anticipated the future in a type of music that was truly futuristic itself. At the same time, their visual representation – album covers and videos, <a href="http://www.kraftwerk.com/">website</a> – is in a clear retro style. </p>
<p>The original cover of Radio-Aktivität, for example, features the 1930s <em>Volksempfänger</em> radio, used by Hitler for propaganda purposes – and the <a href="http://www.kraftwerk.com/">band website</a> is a feast of 1980s pixillated glory. Students on my course would compare it with one of the cutting-edge design websites of current popstars. Why Kraftwerk create that tension between the nostalgic, technologically outdated and the futuristic so often is a puzzling question, and there are so many answers…</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70958/original/image-20150203-25536-1rgfeeg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70958/original/image-20150203-25536-1rgfeeg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70958/original/image-20150203-25536-1rgfeeg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70958/original/image-20150203-25536-1rgfeeg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70958/original/image-20150203-25536-1rgfeeg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70958/original/image-20150203-25536-1rgfeeg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70958/original/image-20150203-25536-1rgfeeg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The band’s website.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kraftwerk</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Modern meanings</h2>
<p>The themes of Kraftwerk’s music are clearly not limited to Germany but increasingly reflect key questions of Western civilisation. Accordingly, their last two albums <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2013/feb/13/kraftwerk-tate-modern-six-techno-pop">Techno Pop</a> (1986) and <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/tour-de-france-mw0000040440">Tour de France Soundtracks</a> (2003) feature multi-lingual lyrics in many major European languages. And here we have a topic for another session: what it means to be European. Ralf Hütter, for example, has repeatedly pointed out that Kraftwerk is a European band from Germany.</p>
<p>Germany was initially at the forefront of European integration as the country had learnt its lesson from the destruction wrecked by nationalism. After reunification, this morally motivated attitude changed. Now, under the seemingly never-ending regime of Angela Merkel, the conservative government reverts to Realpolitik, using Germany’s economic strength to impose austerity measures on already impoverished eurozone countries.</p>
<p>Something to discuss: Can Kraftwerk’s music, which emphasises its European dimension, be understood as a comment on current developments? Does popular music, if studied attentively, contribute to our understanding of the world? I would of course plead for a resounding yes – but am eager to find out what others think. And which bands they deem to be important. And in that respect, I can only learn from students.</p>
<p>Which leaves me to find a suitable activity for the last session. Anyone up for a Kraftwerk party?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36160/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Uwe Schütte does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If there is one band in the world that deserves intellectual exploration, it has to be Kraftwerk. Founded in 1970 in Düsseldorf, the two founding members, Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, forever changed…Uwe Schütte, Reader in German, Aston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.