Ralf Hutter

Ralf Hutter 2

Ralf Hutter of Kraftwerk. The second most influential pop group after the Beatles is touring in support of Tour de France Soundtracks, their first CD of new material in 18 years. While not as aggressive, funky, or strange as their earlier work, it's good: kind of shimmery and ambient and yes, they can still write hooks. "Vitamin," "La Forme" and the remixed 80s hiphop classic "Tour De France" are quite hummable. They sound as if they spent all those years tracking down every trace of hiss and hum in their studio and then carefully mastered every millisecond because it's an amazingly clean, refined production. One thing they still have over the generation of electronic dance musicians they inspired is great technical finesse, and I'm guessing machines expensive enough to produce sounds and textures beyond the budgets of most basement producers. They don't flaunt it, though; the music is very understated. More tour photos in addition to the ones above, by Swedish photographer Henrik Larrson, are here. A review of the Brixton Academy show is here.


- tom moody 4-10-2004 12:31 am

don't forget the official web home: http://www.kraftwerk.com/
b
- anonymous (guest) 4-10-2004 7:39 am


Where'd you get those influencial pop group stats?
- steve 4-10-2004 8:28 pm


they are coming here to TO in a couple of weeks. I just bought tickets.
- sally mckay 4-10-2004 9:37 pm


I teased Tom about those ratings too. Of course he’s talking groups so we don’t have to worry about Dylan, Hendrix, et al… Kraftwerk does seem to represent a vector that is more important to us today than much of classic rock, but we could ask whether being a prime embodiment of a trend is the same thing as influence per se. I had to bring up the Futurist line about how “Eugene Onegin would have been written even if Pushkin had never existed.”
- alex 4-11-2004 8:26 pm


What about Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five?

No, I'm serious.
- jim 4-11-2004 8:32 pm


Rolling Stone's April issue's "Immortals: 50 Greatest Artists of All Time" doesn't include Kraftwerk, or Grandmaster Flash. Well, of course they wouldn't (although they did include some groups), because the 'Stone is generationally fixated on folk/blues as the only "authentic" music. Run DMC is included and Chuck D says they're the most influential hiphop group, BTW.

Alex is questioning whether electronic dance music, a huge global phenomenon, would have "happened anyway" without Kraftwerk. I would say that by 1991, the development of certain sounds (hardcore rave techno, jungle) was a product of what Eno calls "scenius"--lots of people working on similar things pushing the sounds forward. But from from 74-78, Kraftwerk pretty much owned the field. Trans Europe Express was a breakthrough, recognized and appreciated by English punks and American hiphoppers alike (even Lester Bangs, Mr. Rock'n'Roll authenticity, liked Kraftwerk). From there "the sound" took off, popularized by Giorgio Moroder, Afrika Bambaataa and all the synth-poppers. And from there to House, Detroit techno, and the rest. (Computer World was hugely influential to the latter.)

For an example of where rhythm synthesizers were in the early '70s, listen to Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come [excerpt - streaming mp3]. That cut is interestingly dated cult space rock, but the "rhythm genie" is about at the level of Tex and Edna Boil's Organ Emporium. Jean Michel Jarre and Tangerine Dream were still doing psychedelic noodling at that stage. Kraftwerk reinvented the drum machine sound as something leaner and funkier (hence their popularity in boomboxes from 77 on). Also, they were their own Brian Epstein, developing a retro-futurist "look" to go with the music. Seminal, influential--the sound was by no means inevitable.

- tom moody 4-12-2004 2:30 am


The Arthur Brown drum machine was called the Bentley Rhythm Ace. It was used in '72, not '74, so the reference above now reads "where rhythm synthesizers were in the early '70s" instead of "where rhythm synthesizers were ca. '74."
- tom moody 4-28-2004 6:06 am


Seems to me that The Velvets might rank as high as Kraftwerk.
- steve 5-06-2004 9:03 pm


The only reason Kraftwerk ranks slightly higher is because of (i) the crossover factor and the (ii) invention-of-a-genre factor. The Velvets' revolution was ultimately to create the "indie" flavor of the guitar-drum-vocal, verse-verse-chorus structure, as opposed to rewriting the rules of the game. They were influential, but Kraftwerk was influential and popular--taking their message outside the genre.

The things we value the Velvets for (musically--let's leave out the lyrics here for the moment) are dischords, modal structures as opposed to songs, drone-like distortion applied over metronomic beats, "abstraction." These were all happening within psychedelia--e.g., the Dead, but especially krautrock. Kraftwerk took the anti-song, electro-hypnotic part of it and introduced it to a much broader, multiracial audience via the disco dancefloor. A certain amount was lost in the process, for sure--thumping as Mo's drumming was, it was never "robotic." And the lyrics aren't as erudite as Lou's/Cale's. But some people might prefer the nerdy simplicity of "I program my home computer/Beam myself into the future."

- tom moody 5-07-2004 6:30 pm


get werkin'


- bill 6-14-2005 7:15 pm





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