Line #14 Music/Kraftwerk


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ab2a7cde5c61efc5f8dcd94d1ac2090d.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350: The classic lineup, from left to right: Karl Bartos, Ralf Hütter, Wolfgang Flür, and Creator/WillForte... Er, sorry, Florian Schneider.]]
3
4	->''"She's a model and she's looking good,\
5	I'd like to take her home that's understood,\
6	She plays hard to get, she smiles from time to time,\
7	It only takes a camera to change her mind."''
8	-->-- "'''The Model'''"
9
10	Kraftwerk (German for "power station") is a German electronic group based in Düsseldorf, Germany, noted for such songs as "Autobahn", "Trans-Europe Express", "The Model", "The Robots", and "Computer Love". Founded by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970 and originating in the [[{{Krautrock}} highly experimental rock scene]] of 1970s UsefulNotes/WestGermany, the group is credited as a TropeMaker of ElectronicMusic in general, being among the very first groups to begin experimenting making music entirely electronically.
11
12	Their influence is ''incredibly'' difficult to overstate. They're viewed as electronic music's equivalent of Music/TheBeatles, it's been said that you could walk into any nightclub and likely hear traces of their work, and it wouldn't be a stretch to state that modern electronic dance music as it exists today -- from {{techno}}, {{industrial}} and {{EBM}} to SynthPop and even HipHop, to scratch the surface -- would not be the same without them. On top of that, their output from the early '70s until the dawn of the '80s is usually considered pretty ahead of its time to this day.
13
14	Kraftwerk's songs mainly have to do with technology, tying directly into the [[KayfabeMusic gimmick]][=/=]aesthetic of the group members being robots, often acting [[TheStoic stoic-like]] and utilizing robotic replicas of themselves for some promotional appearance that became less and less human-like over the years. Their 1974 song, "Autobahn" -- designed to replicate the sounds of driving the titular highway -- was famously cut from a whopping [[EpicRocking 23 minutes]] to less than four for radio play, and became a surprise hit, reaching the top 40 in America and the UK, amongst other countries.
15
16	The group's classic line-up, after Hütter and Schneider, included Wolfgang Flür and Karl Bartos. Flür left the group in 1987, Bartos did the same in 1990, and Schneider departed in 2008. On May 6, 2020, it was announced that Schneider passed away of cancer not long after his 73rd birthday.
17
18	Despite their enormous influence, Kraftwerk spent years struggling to get enough votes to be inducted into the UsefulNotes/RockAndRollHallOfFame. They were finally admitted in 2021, as an early influencer.
19	----
20
21	!! Discography:
22
23	* ''Tone Float'' (1969 - as Organisation) [[note]] The common CD edition of this album, released without the band's consent (as they've disowned their first four LP's) amends the credit to 'Kraftwerk / Organisation'. [[/note]]
24	* ''Kraftwerk'' (1970)
25	* ''Kraftwerk 2'' (1972)
26	* ''Ralf und Florian'' (1973)
27	* ''Music/{{Autobahn}}'' (1974)
28	* ''Radio-Activity'' [[note]]Original German title: ''Radio-Aktivität''[[/note]] (1975)
29	* ''Music/TransEuropeExpress'' [[note]]Original German title: ''Trans Europa Express''[[/note]] (1977)
30	* ''Music/TheManMachine'' [[note]]Original German title: ''Die Mensch-Maschine''[[/note]] (1978)
31	* ''Music/ComputerWorld'' [[note]]Original German title: ''Computerwelt''[[/note]] (1981)
32	* ''[[Music/TechnoPop Electric Café]]'' [[note]]Originally titled ''Techno Pop''; rereleased in 2009 under that title.[[/note]] (1986)
33	* ''The Mix'' (1991) [[note]]Contains remixes and updates of some of their best-known pieces; this and ''Minimum-Maximum'' are the closest the band have ever come to putting out a greatest-hits collection.[[/note]]
34	* ''Tour de France Soundtracks'' (2003) [[note]]Rereleased in 2009 with the shortened name ''Tour de France''.[[/note]]
35	* ''Minimum-Maximum'' (2005) (Live album)
36	* ''The Catalogue'' (2009) (Box set) [[note]]German title: ''Der Katalog''. Contains remastered versions of all albums from ''Autobahn'' to ''Tour de France'', with new cover art and unseen photos in the liner notes.[[/note]]
37	* ''3-D The Catalogue'' (2017) (Live album) [[note]]German title: ''3-D Der Katalog''. Contains live versions of all songs included in ''The Catalogue'', performed between 2012 and 2016.[[/note]]
38	----
39
40	!! Tropes exemplified by Kraftwerk and their songs:
41
42	[[foldercontrol]]
43	[[folder:A-F]]
44	* AdaptationDistillation: The version played live, post-''The Mix'', of "Autobahn", which is originally 22 minutes long, is compressed down to 9 minutes, but retains all the high points of the original. The same thing happened to the single version, which was slashed down to 3 minutes but still kept the best parts of the song.
45	* AllGermansAreNazis: The band worked to [[AvertedTrope avert]] and [[DefiedTrope defy]] this trope; however, some media (for example ''NME'') played it straight when discussing them. The artwork for ''Trans-Europe Express'' features photographs of the band styled straight out of the 1940s, but supposedly the idea behind the concept was to imagine what a different, more positive recent history for Germany (and Europe) could have been like. Ironically, the late Florian Schneider was actually half-Jewish (through his mother).
46	* AnimatedMusicVideo: "Musique Non-Stop", one of the [[TropeMakers first]] computer animated videos.
47	* AnnualTitle: The single "Expo 2000," filled with repeating soundbites of different voices saying: "Das einundzwanzigste Jahrhundert" / "The Twenty-First Century" throughout. The song itself released in December 1999, just a month before the twenty-first century began.
48	* ArcSymbol: A road cone appears in some form in all of their pre-''Autobahn'' albums, which nonetheless became iconic. Most noticeably, both ''Kraftwerk'' and ''Kraftwerk 2'' depicted only a simple drawing of a road cone albeit with different colors (allowing fans to nickname the albums "Red Cone" and "Green Cone", respectively), but also ''Ralf und Florian'', which had mainly a picture of, appropiately enough, Ralf and Florian, had a picture of a road cone on the top of the cover, and even ''Tone Float'', done by Kraftwerk's predecessor band Organisation, had a picture of a road cone on the back cover. Bootleggers took this even further -- a bootleg edition of ''Ralf und Florian'' replaces the original cover depicting the two artists with a blue cone to match the first two albums. And to complete a 'cone' quadrilogy, one version of the bootleg ''K4'' (a live performance of otherwise-unavailable material recorded between the first two self-titled albums) depicts a yellow cone on its cover!
49	* ArcWords:
50	** In ''Music/ComputerWorld'', expect to hear the word "computer" on most songs.
51	** In ''Electric Café'', the words "Music Non Stop, Techno Pop." are repeated in the majority of songs. They're also the titles of two of the tracks.
52	* AuthorAppeal: Ralf Hütter loves cycling so much he and his band wrote a song about the biggest race in cycling, "Tour de France", completed with sampled voices and mechanical sounds associated with cycling. They even go further by writing an album about it. Hütter suffered a cycling accident that left him in a coma during the initial sessions for ''Techno Pop'' (the album that became ''Electric Café''), and Karl Bartos once mentioned that the first thing Hütter said after waking up was "Where's my bicycle?". Hütter denied Bartos' account, but did admit that it made for a good story.
53	* BeepingComputers: "Pocket Calculator" from ''Music/ComputerWorld'':
54	--> ''"By pressing down a special key, it plays a little melody."''
55	* BilingualBonus: While they translate many of their songs into foreign languages, particularly when performing for the host nation, some songs are done in two separate languages:
56	** "The Robots" has the phrase [[GratuitousRussian in Russian]], ''"Я твой слуга, я твой работник."'' "I'm your servant, I'm your worker."
57	** "Numbers" from ''Music/ComputerWorld'' includes numbers spoken in several different languages. (German, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Russian, among others.)
58	* ConceptAlbum: All of their studio albums since 1975, to some degree. Though it's being done most consistently on ''Radio-Activity'', ''Music/ComputerWorld'' and ''Tour de France Soundtracks''.
59	* CoordinatedClothes: Going with their robot imagery, the band became known for using matching clothes; perhaps the most well-remembered being the red shirts with black ties that they wore on the cover of ''The Man Machine''.
60	* DancePartyEnding: "Showroom Dummies" ends with the titular showroom dummies walking into a dance club and dancing. The music video for the song also ends this way, with Kraftwerk dancing.
61	* DarkerAndEdgier: ''Radio-Activity'' has a colder, more foreboding tone than the relatively more breezy ''Autobahn''.
62	* DeadpanSnarker: ''Legendarily'' so. Florian Schneider was particularly infamous for that, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhJJ-KypkBk mostly for this snarktastic interview for Brazilian television]].
63	--> '''Interviewer:''' What are the songs that you are going to play?\
64	''[{{beat}}]''\
65	'''Florian Schneider:''' [[MathematiciansAnswer All.]]
66	* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Basically everything before ''Music/{{Autobahn}}'' is quite a bit different from their later work. Compare [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCg7hPeUdvE this]] to anything after ''Autobahn''... No, any suggestion that Florian Schneider played the flute is ''not'' the product of a highly deranged imagination.
67	* EpicRocking: All tracks from their debut album (the shortest is "Ruckzuck" with 7:47), "Kling-Klang" (17:36) and "Wellenlänge" (9:40) from their second album, "Ananas Symphonie" (13:55) from ''Ralf und Florian'', "Autobahn" (22:43) and the two-part "Kometenmelodie" (which totals over 12 minutes) from ''Autobahn'', the title track (6:42) from ''Radio-Activity'', the title track (6:52) from ''Trans-Europe Express'',[[note]]It and the track that follows it, "Metal on Metal", are basically one long song, however, making it total almost 14 minutes[[/note]] "Neon Lights" from ''The Man-Machine'' and "Computer Love" from ''Computer World''.
68	* EveryEpisodeEnding: Ever since their 1990 tour, "Musique Non-Stop" has closed all regular Kraftwerk concerts. Part MeaningfulName, this also gives each band member a brief solo before he leaves the stage. With the current stage layout, it's also the only indication of ''what'' each of the band members actually do during a concert.
69	* FakeOutFadeOut:
70	** "Autobahn" has a couple fake-out endings. It's best to clear your daily schedule if you're going to listen to that song.
71	** "Ruckzuck" comes to a complete and natural stop, then after a moment of dead silence, the ending of the song suddenly plays again for a second and last time.
72	* FloatingHeadSyndrome: A few albums have this, namely ''Music/ComputerWorld'' and ''Electric Café''.
73	[[/folder]]
74	[[folder:G-L]]
75	* GermanicEfficiency: If you've ever wondered what Germanic Efficiency ''sounds'' like, this is it. They wanted to make music that sounded like '70s Germany, in the same way that the music of Music/TheBeachBoys sounded like early '60s California.
76	* GratuitousPanning: "Autobahn" takes this to the extreme, to mimic the sounds of passing traffic.
77	* GreatestHitsAlbum: Subverted with ''The Mix.'' As the band did not simply want to release a vanilla compilation album, they recorded new version of their most popular songs, which also brought them up to speed with the then-current state of synthesizers.
78	* HallOfMirrors: The title of one of their songs, which is of course [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin about a hall of mirrors.]]
79	* HeavyMeta: "Techno Pop", who's main English lyric practically describes the genre it's in: "Synthetic electronic sounds, industrial rhythms all around."
80	* {{Krautrock}}: They were classified as this in their early years, back before they started using exclusively electronic instruments. In fact, the members of Music/{{Neu}} were members of Kraftwerk first, and played on the first SelfTitledAlbum.
81	* LoopedLyrics: Several songs, almost the majority of them in fact.
82	* LoudnessWar: Downplayed at worst. As one might expect, their remasters have been slightly louder than the original [=CDs=], which ranged in the [=DR13-16=] range, but they've never released a CD that scored worse than [=DR8=]. All of the discs in the ''3-D'' box set from 2017 were either [=DR11=] or [=DR12=].
83	[[/folder]]
84	[[folder:M-R]]
85	* MachineMonotone: Emulated in the vocals of some of their songs, most prominently, "The Robots."
86	* MoodWhiplash: Occasionally they'd throw in a love song on their albums, such as "The Model", "Computer Love" and "Sex Object" (though that last one is more of an AntiLoveSong), quite a shift from singing about robots, pocket calculators and radioactivity. Ironically enough, "The Model" is the band's most popular song with the general public. That is probably because most people can relate to a man singing about his attraction to a beautiful woman, but much fewer people can relate to lyrics about science and technology.
87	* MundaneMadeAwesome: A common theme, although the best-known examples would be "Autobahn" and "Pocket Calculator".
88	* OminousPipeOrgan: On ''The Mix'' version of ''Music/TransEuropeExpress''. Orchestration in their music is very rare, but it was of course a synthesized organ.
89	* OurGraphicsWillSuckInTheFuture: A few of their album covers. Intentionally invoked in the remastered CD editions (which originated with the ''Catalogue'' box), as the cover artwork for each album is reduced to a single, incredibly simple, large icon.
90	* ProtestSong: "Radioactivity." The original lyrics mixed references to Madame Curie (radioactivity) with "Tune in to the melody..." (radio activity - i.e. listening to the radio) but later live versions, and the version from the 1991 album ''The Mix'', make it an explicitly anti-nuclear anthem, specifically the proposed second processing plant at the Sellafield processing site in Seascale, England. In 2012, they started performing an altered version of "Radioactivity" with new, Japanese lyrics concerning Fukushima.
91	--> ''"Sellafield-2 will produce 7.5 tons of plutonium every year. 1.5 kilogram of plutonium make a nuclear bomb.''[[note]]This is ArtisticLicenseNuclearPhysics: A ''really'' effectively-made bomb would need about 4 kg. The bomb dropped over Nagasaki used 6.2 kg. In most cases, 10–16 kg of plutonium would be necessarily, depending on the build of the pit.[[/note]] ''Sellafield-2 will release the same amount of radioactivity into the environment as [[GoingCritical Chernobyl]] every 4.5 years. One of these radioactive substances, Krypton-85, will cause death and skin cancer."''\
92	''"It's in the air, for you and me."''
93	* {{Retraux}}: Their later live visuals have an '80s-inspired 8-bit look to them.
94	* RidiculouslyHumanRobot: Perhaps at some point in the early to late Seventies, but as time went on their robot personas became less and less human. Case in point, [[https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Xvi552hlt90/maxresdefault.jpg here's the 1978 robots]] and [[https://i.ytimg.com/vi/FrX8HTMcYls/maxresdefault.jpg here's the Falk Grieffenhagen-bot from one of their recent live shows.]]
95	* RobotOrSpacemanAlterEgo: It is because of Kraftwerk presenting themselves as robots that a number of electronic bands have adopted robot or spaceman alter egos.
96	[[/folder]]
97	[[folder:S-Z]]
98	* SelfTitledAlbum: Their first two albums.
99	* SharpDressedMan: See above image. Their formal, clean-cut image made them stand out from their more casually-dressed contemporaries.
100	* ShoutOut:
101	** The "eins zwei drei vier" count that begins "Showroom Dummies" was made as a reference to Music/TheRamones' habit of starting their songs with Dee Dee quickly shouting "one two three four!"
102	** "Trans-Europe Express" references a meeting between the band members and Music/IggyPop and Music/DavidBowie, while they were working on Iggy's ''Music/TheIdiot'' and Bowie's ''Music/StationToStation''. They even sneak a pun regarding Bowie's album's title.
103	--->''"From '''station to station''', back to Düsseldorf City / Meet Iggy Pop and David Bowie..."''
104	** "Metropolis" references the 1927 German science fiction classic ''Film/{{Metropolis}}''.
105	** They have a song titled "Music/FranzSchubert".
106	** "The Voice of Energy" shout-out to the [[VoiceOfTheResistance Voice of America]] (Whose German broadcasts began "Hier spricht ein Stimme aus Amerika", and an early [[https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=126781688 Bell Labs recording]].
107	* SkeleBot9000: Torsos with rotating heads and skeletal arms, for example, in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9iDrSeFR8c 1991 video]] for ''The Robots''. Unlike real skeletons, they have only one bone in the lower arm, but two in the upper arm.
108	* SpeedyTechnoRemake: Their remake of ''Music/{{Autobahn}}'' on their album of self-made remakes, ''The Mix.'' It is speedy only in comparison though, given that they've taken the original version which was over twenty minutes long and condensed it to only over nine minutes long, by making it a little faster.
109	* SpiritualAntithesis: Music/RyuichiSakamoto considered the band this to his own act, Music/YellowMagicOrchestra. While both bands were SynthPop groups who rose to prominence around the same time, Kraftwerk generally had a much more mechanical and statuesque sound and image, primarily covering topics surrounding the rapid technological advancement of the late 20th century in their work, compared to YMO's brighter, more breezy sound and coverage of more abstract topics.
110	* StandardSnippet: Any TV item about post-war Germany (unless soundtracked with schlager music) is pretty much guaranteed to make heavy use of "Autobahn."
111	* StepUpToTheMicrophone: Karl Bartos is the lead singer on "The Telephone Call".
112	* TheStoic: A staple of their robot-like personas. However, noticeably averted somewhat during their concerts in the 1970s and early 80s, as the band would sometimes interact with the audience (such as holding out the mini instruments into the audience during "Pocket Calculator" for attendees to play "a little melody").
113	* SynchroVox: Used for the Russian-speaking portions of the video for [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXa9tXcMhXQ The Robots]] from ''Music/TheManMachine''.
114	* SyntheticVoiceActor: Or rather, synthetic singer, in many of their songs.
115	* TelephoneSong: "The Telephone Call" is about maintaining a long distance relationship.
116	* TrrrillingRrrs: "Wirrr sind die Roboterrr." Less noticeable in the English version, but still present.
117	* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: "Trans-Europe Express," which makes traveling to hang out with Music/DavidBowie and Music/IggyPop sound about as exciting as buying groceries. (Florian actually went asparagus shopping with Iggy Pop after they met, so points for realism, at least.)
118	* UpdatedRerelease:
119	** ''The Mix'', which re-records some of the group's best known songs on what was then the most up-to-date synth technology.
120	** 2017's ''The Catalogue'' release can be seen as an updated version of ''The Mix'', much longer (covering 8 of their albums) and with more re-recorded songs from their 3D live concerts.
121	* {{Zeerust}}: Some of their older works sounded futuristic at the time but are somewhat dated now, or they've already come true, like ''Music/ComputerWorld.'' The version of "Computer World" on the 2005 live album ''Minimum-Maximum'' still references [[FailedFutureForecast the KGB.]]
122	[[/folder]]

Context Music / Kraftwerk