Kraftwerk

March 17th, 2004

So anyway, Kraftwerk were playing in Glasgow last night for the first time in thirteen years. I have to say that Kraftwerk are bonkers.

The show had electronic music in it that was thirty years old and still sounded fresh, but there was still a kind of anachronistic feel about them, as if the world of electronic music had left them behind. It has, but not very far.

In the third part of the show, the Kraftwerk robots replace the middle-aged band members and start ‘playing’ the music instead. It’s amusingly obvious that the heads of the robots have faces twenty years younger than their human counterparts.

It’s also bizarre to see these futuristic Kraftwerk man machines, backlit by a screen of cathode green images being captured by the crowd on hand-held digital cameras as pictures, sound and video and transmitted by mobile phones. The computer world of Kraftwerk on stage seemed like something from the past when compared to the technological world of the audience.

Don’t get me wrong; the mystery of the enigmatic and reclusive Kraftwerk is served well by their mechanical, pixellated images and although their art would have been served better by updating themselves, it wouldn’t have been the Kraftwerk people wanted to see. They seemed like something from another world.

It does still work, as testified by the crowd’s response to the cold, dry german robotic voice of Kraftwerk that introduces them. All through the show, that voice would come back and demand attention, as if to say ‘This is fucking Kraftwerk!’

It helps that I had a few beers. Not because they’re better when pissed, but because I had a raspy throat the next morning. Instead of singing in the shower I could do a very passable impression of that dry robotic voice…

“ein, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht.”

How’s that for an earworm?

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