Kraftwerk: Robots Rebooted

To mark the 35th anniversary of the German electro pioneers’ landmark album ‘Autobahn’, Kraftwerk’s entire eight-CD catalogue is being remastered and reissued by Mute.

Think of German music today, and it’s easy to summarise what the country has to offer in terms of lazy stereotypes – pint-clutching oompah enthusiasts, denim & leather decorated metal heads, cheese-crusted techno-pop.

Follow the by-now faint tracks backwards some 40 years from the latter, however, and you’ll wind up somewhere immeasurably more interesting. Back in the early 1970’s, Germany momentarily became THE most happening place for groundbreaking, cliché-busting, forward-gazing sounds on the planet. The loose movement, with musicians linked together considerably more by geography and language than any shared musical aims, crudely referred to abroad as Krautrock, gifted the world many remarkable bands with genuine staying power. Even with acts as astonishingly original as Can and Neu! to boast of, Kraftwerk stand a (robot)head and shoulders taller than their peers in terms of the influence they’ve had on the development of genres that during the band’s Seventies heyday would’ve seemed impossibly futuristic, the stuff of wildly imaginative sci-fi fiction rather than actual forthcoming reality – to everyone but Kraftwerk’s visionary central duo Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, that is.

By crafting many of electronic music’s central building blocks, Kraftwerk’s early works led to the development of hip hop, electronica, techno and dance music as we know it. It’d also be argued that Kraftwerk’s bold visual ideas, particularly the way the band’s members gradually evolved from humans into robots towards the end of 70’s, pioneered the idea of a band as a comprehensive concept, with image and artwork at least as important as the music itself, the ramifications of which can be seen in vivid multicolour in every move made by the likes of Daft Punk. Cast a quick glance along the musical landscape, and you’ll see traces of Kraftwerk all over the shop, from the grand - LCD Soundsystem – to the bland (Coldplay, who recently sampled 1981’s ‘Computer Love’) - and the downright daft, in other words the kind of relentlessly upbeat, mid-European dance-pop that’s destined to always waft through the doors of lager-stained intoxication centrals.

Such widespread influence guarantees Kraftwerk’s place amongst the most important acts pop music’s ever managed to produce. But it’s quite commonplace to be a fearless pioneer, only for the more modern takes on the once-fresh templates to turn what once sounded startling in its innovation into a musty museum piece. Mute’s comprehensive Kraftwerk remastering programme that covers the eight albums the band produced between ‘Autobahn’ (1974) and ‘Tour de France Soundtracks’ (2003), available either as individual CDs or 8-CD boxset ‘The Catalogue’, proves classic Kraftwerk is in no danger of fading into irrelevancy anytime soon.

Assembled in the first incarnation of the band’s famed Dusseldorf studio Kling Klang with help from uber-producer Conny Plank, ‘Autobahn’ (****) isn’t actually Kraftwerk’s debut. Unlike its exploratory, largely improvised predecessors ‘Kraftwerk 1’, ‘Kraftwerk 2’ and ‘Ralf und Florian’, however, it provides the first full flowerings of the trademark Kraftwerk sound. Disciplined, mechanical and, barring the odd blast of Schneider’s flute, entirely electronic, the title track became a surprise hit on release, turning what could’ve been an obscure experimentation into a headline-grabbing concern. The marathon-length full version remains a head-spinning wonder, eclipsing everything else the album has to offer. Although not entirely devoid of reference points (the minimalism of the ‘motorik’ beats is reminiscent of Neu!, whose Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother were both briefly in Kraftwerk in the band’s very early stages), the paean to the most famous embodiment of Germany’s mass transport system packs an unmatched capacity to turn relentless repetition into hypnotic enchantment, with the ensuing warm pulse and simplistic melodies reminiscent of a bunch of androids tackling the girls and cars concept of vintage Beach Boys. The track’s 23-minute duration is enough to cross vast distances on the speed limitless German motorways. With it, Kraftwerk transported the listener several light years from Europe’s traumatic then-recent past into a clean, shimmering, hi-tech future.