on Kraftwerk

weirdly enough, i never really got into their music. i heard little of it actually. and recently, i heard this track and thought 'fuck me, this is one of the most beautiful things i've ever heard':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlcZNwSNA5s

i just remembered that i loved tour de france soundtracks. this track for instance is wicked:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UWM6Dle8Uk

and then i listen to this and figure out it's dopplereffekt made 30 years earlier:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXMMGqtzyYQ&list=FL0m3Jo-9a9zoSBVRtQljSeg&index=195&feature=plpp_video

i don't know where i'm going with this thread, anyway i'm 30 years late and it's great to wake up and realize the beauty and timeless vitality of some things you thought were outdated.

jesus forgives

Taking Autobahn as a starting point, you're actually 38 years too late. ;) But yes, they're one of the all time best electronic groups to this day.

You should probably also check out Karl Bartos's solo work, it's like a modern version of The Man-Machine, kinda.

Will post more in this thread later, have to run, but for all their original albums, it still fucking floors me that the mix was released in 91.

i mean fuck...

wow brian.... really?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Sbvylpwah8

my mom just told me that stinson had lots of kraftwerk tapes in his truck, for the long shifts you know

Been rocking Minimum-Maximum in the car a lot lately, I love how most of their lyrics/themes are so unabashedly cheesy, but with beats like whoa.

  On 4/16/2012 at 2:42 PM, dr lopez said:

Will post more in this thread later, have to run, but for all their original albums, it still fucking floors me that the mix was released in 91.

 

 

i mean fuck...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEyxppGP8T4

I drop the Robots version off this in a mix I made a while back (bookended by Yello and Prince, peep me sig below ) to excellent effect - what an f'ing choon!

I wouldn't go as far as to call Kraftwerk's lyrics cheesy. They wrote one song about an attractive model, which became popular as a result. But pretty much everything else they've written has been about the wonder of scientific and technological progress. There aren't anywhere near enough songs about those topics, even ones written using high technology instruments.

  On 4/16/2012 at 5:39 PM, ZoeB said:

I wouldn't go as far as to call Kraftwerk's lyrics cheesy.

2 words

  On 4/16/2012 at 5:48 PM, ThatSpanishGuy said:

  On 4/16/2012 at 5:39 PM, ZoeB said:

I wouldn't go as far as to call Kraftwerk's lyrics cheesy.

 

2 words

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

TECHNO

  Reveal hidden contents

POP

 

 

to me kraftwerk are like the second beatles, in terms of pop-art-innovation-influence

and that happens with great art, is timeless

I love kraftwerk and i recommand the "Minimum Maximum" live album, the sound and atmosphere are amazing, it's just a must have

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T65NpyfPkQ&feature=player_detailpage

  On 4/16/2012 at 5:39 PM, ZoeB said:

I wouldn't go as far as to call Kraftwerk's lyrics cheesy. They wrote one song about an attractive model, which became popular as a result. But pretty much everything else they've written has been about the wonder of scientific and technological progress. There aren't anywhere near enough songs about those topics, even ones written using high technology instruments.

hmm really? i've always assumed, (maybe wrongly?) that their lyrics were intentionally tongue in cheek. Even as far back as Radioactivity, the whole obsession with radioactivity almost in a positive light seemed almost like satire, but clever satire.

Radioactivity

It's in the air for you and me

  On 4/16/2012 at 9:18 PM, capitan mission said:

to me kraftwerk are like the second beatles, in terms of pop-art-innovation-influence

and that happens with great art, is timeless

except the Beatles never kicked out anyone in the band because their shoes weren't expensive enough

There is really too much to say it's impossible to now where to begin and what to focus on, maybe one day I'll just sit down and collect all my thoughts into one cohesive narrative. To me Kraftwerk may be the most conceptually and aesthetically successful musical artists of all time. They are also criminally misunderstood by every press journalist and as such 90% of their listeners. "Teutonic, cold, calculating" are usually what you see when a piece about Kraftwerk surfaces. Of course they have completely played this up to the anglophone media for marketing purposes, but to me that couldn't be farther from the truth.

Awepittance is completely dead on in the tongue in cheek lyrics. Radioactivity being the best example with it's droll double-entendre theme throughout the album. I don't know how anyone can't laugh at ohm sweet ohm when the alberti-esque bass comes in.

What I think is truly brilliant about Kraftwerk and which is rarely discussed is their conceptual implementation of their instruments. It seems to me, that outside of experimental composers ala Lucier and Subotnik, early electronic music that today is hailed as "influential" gravitated towards visions of a cyber-space themed future (Telex comes to mind as an exception). Unknown electronic sounds perfectly fit with visions of alien planets and space exploration. Apart from Spacelab on the Man-Machine (which itself was still grounded aesthetically in russian constructivism of the 20s) Kraftwerk never used synth sounds to evoke the music of interstellar bodies, or a utopian cyber-future like Cybotron or Giorgio. Instead they used these new instruments to honor the old technological achievements of their childhood, Autobahns, Radios, Trains; their music celebrating the mundane of modern life not the fantastic - driving, listening to the radio, catching a train. Even the most forward-looking album- Computer World, stresses the ordinary life of the future: adding numbers, programming home computers, even online dating(!)

Ok I have to stop now because I'll keep going on and on about computer world fuck i sound like vamos here

  On 4/16/2012 at 11:31 PM, Ivan Ooze said:

I love kraftwerk and i recommand the "Minimum Maximum" live album, the sound and atmosphere are amazing, it's just a must have

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T65NpyfPkQ&feature=player_detailpage

this song... oh god...

it's probably one of the best things i've ever heard in my life. kraftwerk are masters.

and planet of vision right after it is always a treat.

  On 4/17/2012 at 5:11 AM, dr lopez said:

There is really too much to say it's impossible to now where to begin and what to focus on, maybe one day I'll just sit down and collect all my thoughts into one cohesive narrative. To me Kraftwerk may be the most conceptually and aesthetically successful musical artists of all time. They are also criminally misunderstood by every press journalist and as such 90% of their listeners. "Teutonic, cold, calculating" are usually what you see when a piece about Kraftwerk surfaces. Of course they have completely played this up to the anglophone media for marketing purposes, but to me that couldn't be farther from the truth.

 

Awepittance is completely dead on in the tongue in cheek lyrics. Radioactivity being the best example with it's droll double-entendre theme throughout the album. I don't know how anyone can't laugh at ohm sweet ohm when the alberti-esque bass comes in.

 

What I think is truly brilliant about Kraftwerk and which is rarely discussed is their conceptual implementation of their instruments. It seems to me, that outside of experimental composers ala Lucier and Subotnik, early electronic music that today is hailed as "influential" gravitated towards visions of a cyber-space themed future (Telex comes to mind as an exception). Unknown electronic sounds perfectly fit with visions of alien planets and space exploration. Apart from Spacelab on the Man-Machine (which itself was still grounded aesthetically in russian constructivism of the 20s) Kraftwerk never used synth sounds to evoke the music of interstellar bodies, or a utopian cyber-future like Cybotron or Giorgio. Instead they used these new instruments to honor the old technological achievements of their childhood, Autobahns, Radios, Trains; their music celebrating the mundane of modern life not the fantastic - driving, listening to the radio, catching a train. Even the most forward-looking album- Computer World, stresses the ordinary life of the future: adding numbers, programming home computers, even online dating(!)

 

Ok I have to stop now because I'll keep going on and on about computer world fuck i sound like vamos here

I like to compare them to the bauhaus architecture, substraction of everything considered unimportant.

there is no single individuality, just a coherent product. a product of a new optimized rectangular mind.

Taking the times into consideration it was a more or less subtile form of criticism,

a contra peak to the on going cultural revolution, the freed hippie generation,

that will become the cancer of accented individualism (the opposite of its own intention)

this alone is so much foreknowing..it gives me a metaphysical boner.

Maybe you have to come from dusseldorf, the peak of west germany's industrialization...

So I woulnd't call it a celebration of the mundane life, not if you see kraftwerk as a whole, althoug its strong practical.

  On 4/17/2012 at 5:11 AM, dr lopez said:

There is really too much to say it's impossible to now where to begin and what to focus on, maybe one day I'll just sit down and collect all my thoughts into one cohesive narrative. To me Kraftwerk may be the most conceptually and aesthetically successful musical artists of all time. They are also criminally misunderstood by every press journalist and as such 90% of their listeners. "Teutonic, cold, calculating" are usually what you see when a piece about Kraftwerk surfaces. Of course they have completely played this up to the anglophone media for marketing purposes, but to me that couldn't be farther from the truth.

 

Awepittance is completely dead on in the tongue in cheek lyrics. Radioactivity being the best example with it's droll double-entendre theme throughout the album. I don't know how anyone can't laugh at ohm sweet ohm when the alberti-esque bass comes in.

 

What I think is truly brilliant about Kraftwerk and which is rarely discussed is their conceptual implementation of their instruments. It seems to me, that outside of experimental composers ala Lucier and Subotnik, early electronic music that today is hailed as "influential" gravitated towards visions of a cyber-space themed future (Telex comes to mind as an exception). Unknown electronic sounds perfectly fit with visions of alien planets and space exploration. Apart from Spacelab on the Man-Machine (which itself was still grounded aesthetically in russian constructivism of the 20s) Kraftwerk never used synth sounds to evoke the music of interstellar bodies, or a utopian cyber-future like Cybotron or Giorgio. Instead they used these new instruments to honor the old technological achievements of their childhood, Autobahns, Radios, Trains; their music celebrating the mundane of modern life not the fantastic - driving, listening to the radio, catching a train. Even the most forward-looking album- Computer World, stresses the ordinary life of the future: adding numbers, programming home computers, even online dating(!)

 

Ok I have to stop now because I'll keep going on and on about computer world fuck i sound like vamos here

nice post, lopez!

Radioactivity

  On 4/17/2012 at 11:30 AM, schlucharski said:

Taking the times into consideration it was a more or less subtile form of criticism,

a contra peak to the on going cultural revolution, the freed hippie generation,

that will become the cancer of accented individualism (the opposite of its own intention)

this alone is so much foreknowing..it gives me a metaphysical boner.

pretty insightful!

Never heard this version of Computer Welt before. Very cool

yeah cool pst lopez.

one of my life-themes->>

largely sums up my musical philosophy

I never got into it because It sounds too outdated to me. Eletronic music evolved and as a listener I am part of that evolution.

the mix is easily their most underrated album. i grew up on it so i might be deluded but listening to it now i think it definitely deserves a reappraisal

thanks guys. I am like really obsessed with kraftwerk.

vamos I actually think tour de france might be the most underrated. I listened to that thing INTENTLY last night for the first time in ages. jesus it's like mostly just eq sweeps but shit it's done so well.

tour de france really made sense for me between the hours of 530 and 700 AM, half asleep. it's a good album, there should be no question about that at all.

  On 4/17/2012 at 5:19 AM, Hoodie said:

  On 4/16/2012 at 11:31 PM, Ivan Ooze said:

I love kraftwerk and i recommand the "Minimum Maximum" live album, the sound and atmosphere are amazing, it's just a must have

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T65NpyfPkQ&feature=player_detailpage

 

this song... oh god...

 

it's probably one of the best things i've ever heard in my life. kraftwerk are masters.

 

and planet of vision right after it is always a treat.

Super yes. That version of The Man Machine is why I got that album, so fucking good.

Europe Endless is a fantastic song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BACwGCh2Hpc