Dehumanizing Music: Kraftwerk Seeks Musical Purity Through Technology
Gregory E. Pilling

Kraftwerk is the name assumed by four Germans who have had an extremely dramatic impact on music as we know it. They knowingly established the electronic music genre in an attempt to create a pure musical sound based on the precision of new computer technology, free from the influence of humans and their imperfect capabilities. In the early 1970s, Kraftwerk pioneered this creation of computer-based music with their use of technological devices like synthesizers and home-made drum machines, which were still in their earliest stages of development at the time. Hundreds of musicians worldwide have been greatly influenced by the sound and aesthetic they developed. Without Kraftwerk’s influence in the underground electronic culture early on, music genres like industrial, techno, dance, new wave, synthpop, and certainly electronic would have never developed into what we know today. Every aspect of the band, from their music down to the way they acted on stage and in public, epitomized their belief in a total electronic aesthetic and the rejection of human involvement in their lives.

Early electronic music has many roots deep in mid-century Europe, particularly in Germany, from a small cluster of creative geniuses who were probably the anti-social computer nerds of their time, on the fringe of society. They were bothered by the fame and fashion that surrounded popular music at the time, and they were unsatisfied with its sound, inspired by human emotions, so they decided to set out on a course that would eventually change how we understand music today. Being Dadaists of music, they shunned contemporary ideas of what music was and should be, and rejected the traditional instruments that were used to make it. No longer would music have to be created by the talents of mere humans. But who were these forward-looking visionaries of sound? They were music groups like Kraftwerk, Can, and Neu!, Kraftwerk being the most recognized and famous of them all.

All of this was taking place at a time when new technological innovations were being made every day. The 1960s and 70s saw the earliest development of computer technology to help aid universities and businesses, and one day the personal user, but Kraftwerk saw a different use for all of this new-fangled circuitry; music. If someone could figure out how to utilize this equipment, which often makes alien sounding beeps and blips, a new form of electronically created music would literally be invented in front of their eyes. Unfortunately for them, the members of Kraftwerk were not the only eccentrics with this idea in mind. A few other bands and early computer technicians were on the same page, but that only benefited Kraftwerk in their efforts to dominate the infancy of electronic music.

Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter were students in Germany during the 1960s, and they shared a common interest in the German music scene which came to be known as “Krautrock”, which is usually characterized by an experimental use of non-musical sounds, noise, and language, and has a rather spacey atmosphere. The earliest lineup in which Schneider and Hütter performed together was actually with Kraftwerk’s predecessor, a short lived project called Organisation, in 1970. There were several other members of Organisation, but only these two founding members went on to form Kraftwerk. Likewise, the early Kraftwerk lineup shifted several times, and once even contained guitarist Michael Rother and drummer Klaus Dinger who later went on to form another influential band of the time, Neu!, but Schneider and Hütter stayed with the band all the way through. The most recognizable Kraftwerk formation consisted of the two founding members plus Karl Bartos and Wolfgang Flür, both of whom were electronic percussionists. Throughout the early part of Kraftwerk’s career, significant input was also provided by renowned producer ‘Conny’ Plank, who also worked with other respectable experimental and electronic bands of the time.

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Kraftwerk has produced a total of ten full-length albums during their illustrious music career, including the more famous ones like Autobahn, The Man-Machine, Computer World, and their most recent, Tour de France Soundtracks. In conjunction with their albums, Kraftwerk has also released a plethora of rather popular singles, for example: Autobahn, The Robots/Die Roboter, The Model/Das Modell, Pocket Calculator, Computer Love, and several versions of Tour de France. Kraftwerk also had the honor of creating a vocoded speech signature theme for Expo 2000, held in Hannover, Germany, which was later developed into a song and released as a single.

The Kraftwerk sound is characterized by smooth melodies and simple rhythmic patterns. What were once computerized beeps and dings have now been transformed into harmonious tones that would be right at home on the bridge of some future spacecraft. You can visually see this sort of aesthetic in your mind when listening to Kraftwerk’s music. The overall feeling you get from the music is a sense of calm, like you are on that spacecraft enjoying a peaceful sight-seeing journey to the far reaches of the universe. Every note is performed by electronic equipment and is essentially perfect. You do not have to worry about a thing. Just let the computers take over and wave goodbye to the stress and chaos of everyday life.

That is exactly what Kraftwerk wants you to do; totally forget about all of the music that is traditionally made by carbon-based musicians. Humans are inferior when it comes to many things, and creating perfect musical sound is one of them. Our fingers are clumsy and fumble around on the strings of a guitar, and our voices are fragile, often straining for a burst of air from the lungs to reach that high note. Electronics, on the other hand, are not susceptible to our human shortcomings. They have no imperfections and offer a virtually limitless supply of possibilities. They never exert too much energy, they never need to rest, and they never give up, unlike the limited capacity of human endurance. Computers can take the most complex rhythms imaginable and execute them flawlessly, allowing for a higher level of musical development. The tonal quality of the sound is unchanging and there is never a variation in tempo. Perfectly regimented and calculated music is all you get, and that is everything you need. Electronics can simply make better music.

Technology is the key to perfection in music, so it is obvious that the 1970s is when music truly started to become pure. New computer and electronics technologies were being developed and applied to various fields of business, study, research, and entertainment. As one of the world’s most technologically advanced countries, Germany was at the forefront of this advancement. Members of the early electronic bands of the time, including Kraftwerk, all started to use a combination of off-the-shelf components and custom fabricated music machines in an effort to widen the gap between their music and that which was made with traditional human-played instruments. As a complement to these devices, Kraftwerk’s own Ralf Hütter developed home-made drum machines and other equipment in his workshop below the band’s studio. Not even the already mechanical act of beating a drum will be degraded by the human influence.

After “bands like Can, Kraftwerk, Neu! or Faust, using machine sounds and ‘motorik’ rhythms, became the first to really mechanise the sound of popular music” (1), further innovations, such as new synthesizers like those produced by Robert Moog, introduced a much more user-friendly interface for creating electronic music and helped launch the genre into the mainstream. In particular, the Minimoog synthesizer was among the first affordable and portable synthesizer which made it available to a wide range of post-Kraftwerk electronic bands. Dozens, if not hundreds, of new electronic bands sprouted up all around the world in the wake of Kraftwerk and their contemporaries, ready to make their own mark in the world of computer-created music. While the popularity of this new-found style of music spread rapidly and quickly merged with other types of music, the core electronic music artists remained true to the original ideas of electronic precision and purity, eliminating as much of the human element as possible.

But there is one aspect of Kraftwerk that does not go hand-in-hand with the rest of their dehumanizing spirit, the members themselves. Despite the fact that a piece of electronic music equipment can be programmed with literally any melody or rhythm, there still needs to be someone to instruct it. This is where the members’ naturally anti-social behavior really comes into focus. Kraftwerk is well known for being one of the most difficult bands to contact for any reason, even by their own record label. The four members live a life of their own sheltered inside their own Kling Klang studio in Düsseldorf. Their studio telephone does not even have a ring tone because the members do not want to be interrupted. The only way for the outside world to contact them is to call at a precise time in which a band member will simply pick up the phone without signal. They are also rarely seen interacting with people outside of their own environment, and very seldom make public appearances outside of the occasional, closely guarded tour. In fact, in one of the few recent magazine interviews granted by a Kraftwerk band member, the interviewer was instructed to only ask questions regarding his collection of bicycles and was “not allowed to even mention that he was a member of Kraftwerk” (2).

Further evidence of the members’ desire to eliminate the human factor from the band and their music is seen during Kraftwerk’s live concert performances. During certain songs, four mechanized mannequins representing each band member are placed on stage to perform in place of the band. Certain body parts are able to move and “dance” along with the music that is played in the background. The stage itself is very clean and clutter-free, unlike the stage setups of most bands which contain speakers, amps, and various other pieces of equipment piled up on the side, with wires running all over the place. None of this can be found in Kraftwerk’s stage setup, which is simply made up of a clean-lined podium for each of the four members, containing either a synthesizer or drum machine, along with a laptop computer, in recent shows, to coordinate everything. When the band members do appear on stage, they all stay behind their respective podium, wearing precisely the same outfit, usually a formal suit, so as to not stand out in contrast to the music. Instead, the visually stimulating feature of the concert is a large, flat screen behind the four podia, on which different technological scenes and computer art relating to the current song is projected). As much focus as possible is taken off of the human members and directed onto the purity and technological simplicity of their musical aesthetic, which also seems to glorify the members’ cohesion, as if they are nothing more than a small part of the machine that the audience is experiencing.

Kraftwerk truly is an electronic group of musicians, throwing all possible associations with the human character overboard. Throughout every aspect of their daily life and musical careers, they have strived to think solely about the way in which technology is advancing society and how they can translate these ideas into music. By establishing the electronic aesthetic, Kraftwerk has made an indelible mark in music history. Their influence is on the same level as that of The Beatles. From the first time Kraftwerk’s music buzzed through the circuitry of an early synthesizer, to the distant future when compact discs and MP3s are ancient relics of the past, their music will continue to be pleasing to the ears of the machines that created it. This is the music of robots.

Quote #1 from “The Future Is Happening Already” thesis by Karen E. Collins.
Quote #2 from “Desperately Seeking Kraftwerk”, an article in The Guardian by Alexis Petridis.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 2nd, 2007 at 3:09 am and is filed under Electronic, Essays and Articles, Kraftwerk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.