The Sigla Blog

If there’s a band I’ll never tire of it’s Kraftwerk. Ah those Teutonic, robotic Gods. No one makes rhythmic, plinky-plonky, dancey, minimalist, prog-rock electronica like them and I was hooked from the first time I heard them. I was about 11 when I taped the video for ‘Musique Non Stop’ (one of my less obvious funeral choice songs) from MTUSA with Vincent Hanley on our Betamax video. In a trance, I watched it over and over again and brought a friend in to see it who wasn’t keen on the four androgynous figures presented as clunky 3-D robots. Live, they’re a unique spectacle and last year’s Minimum Maximum CD and DVD release proves that what they lack in animation, they make up for with music and visuals.

Since my brother alerted my other half to the addictive Music Thing blog, he’s hooked and today showed me a post that links to a performance of Autobahn from the 1970s. It looks like it was shown on Top of the Pops 2, but I don’t recognise the voiceover, which states at one point (as Music Thing’s Tom Whitwell points out):

“Next year, Kraftwerk hope to eliminate the keyboards altogether, and build jackets with electronic lapels, which can be played by touch.”

If only! The nearest they’ve gotten is their Tron suits and co-ordinating ties that light up. So I poked around Youtube which has tons of Kraftwerk footage, old and new. Check out this bizarre early footage (not great quality as it’s obviously recorded off the TV) of them. Long-haired, playing guitar, flute and drums, it’s all a bit Fairport Convention but you can still hear some of the compositional elements that make up their later work.