A highly stimulating critical biography. Written from a European perspective, Kraftwerk is a pleasure to read.” —Jon Savage, New Statesman (London)
“An engaging critical introduction to the band . . . you can see them everywhere: most fascinatingly in hip-hop, most obviously in techno music, but also in the chrome-helmeted anonymity of Daft Punk, in the industrial philosophy of Factory Records and the Haçienda nightclub, and, ultimately, in the general trajectory of pop music ever since Kraftwerk’s run of great albums between 1974 and 1981.” —Karl Whitney, The Guardian (London)
“As the music of the twentieth century fades from our ears, Kraftwerk’s sound is still moving.” —Jay Elwes, The Spectator (London)
“I read Uwe Schütte’s fascinating new book, and became convinced again of Kraftwerk’s peculiar genius. . . . They remain revolutionary because they have given modern music its primitive pulse.” —Jude Rogers, Prospect
“Schütte proposes that Kraftwerk was, in effect, a redemptive project, a reclamation of prewar modernism and its aims. . . . This book is the German take on the German pop phenomenon.” —John Quin, The Quietus
“Read Schütte’s entertaining and meticulously researched history of the band and it’s hard not to conclude that Kraftwerk demand equivalence at least with the Fab Four.” —The Herald Magazine
“Fascinating . . . Highlights just how innovative and influential they are. Kraftwerk didn’t just beam themselves into the future, they invented it.” —Chris Harvey, The Scotsman (Edinburgh)
“Born in Germany but based in the UK, Schutte is able to assess Kraftwerk from both the German and non-German perspective. This is a lucid, accessible, authoritative, and indispensable account of the Düsseldorf group once mocked for their Teutonic ‘otherness,’ who went on to lay the foundations for modern electronic music.” —David Stubbs, author of Future Days: Krautrock and the Building of Modern Germany
“Schutte positions Kraftwerk not merely as a popular music phenomenon but as the embodiment of our transition from the uncertainty and hope of postwar Europe through to twenty-first-century techno-hyperreality. A forensic analysis of Kraftwerk’s sociopolitical roots and their ongoing cultural effect. Schutte sees beyond the regular band trivia to show a deeper understanding of the impact of Kraftwerk on all aspects of popular culture which enclose us.” —Dr. Stephen Mallinder, founding member of Cabaret Voltaire and Wrangler
“Schütte follows the foundational electropop group that inspired David Bowie’s alienist late-1970s adventures and a multitude of electro variations. He charts how they were a surprising European component in the emergence of hip-hop, as much through their sung-spoken words as their machine-made rhythms. . . . The book functions nicely as an introduction for newcomers to Kraftwerk’s history.” —Paul Morley, Financial Times
04/01/2021
Schütte (German, Aston Univ., Birmingham, UK) provides a fascinating account of the aims and influences of the German electronic-pop group Kraftwerk (German for "power station"). He contends that the core members, Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, created the band in order to forge a new German identity in the aftermath of Nazism, by electronically replicating the sounds of their industrialized Rhineland home and championing internationalism. Weaving together a captivating social history, the author finds that Kraftwerk's music and graphic presentation were influenced by the Bauhaus movement, Italian futurism, and pop art—all of which conceptualized art as a reflection and function of life. Beginning with the band's formation in 1970, Schütte traces the electronic, industrialized folk music of Kraftwerk through various albums that emphasized dominant modern-day, technological realities: Autobahn (cars) (1974); Trans-Europe Express (trains) (1977); The Man-Machine (robots) (1978); and the prescient Computer World (1981). He ends by examining Kraftwerk's refocusing on live concerts, the group's past catalogue, and their impact on popular music, from '80s synth bands to techno to hip-hop. VERDICT This provocative and stimulating, yet readable narrative unearths the social and musical importance of an iconic band, both for general readers and fans.—David P. Szatmary, formerly with Univ. of Washington, Seattle
2021-02-19
An appropriately chilly and brainy history of the pioneering German electronic group.
Founded in Düsseldorf in 1970 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, Kraftwerk (“power station”) was an unlikely pop phenomenon. Their early hit “Autobahn” was a distillation of a 23-minute track meant to evoke the drift and speed of the national highway, and the members cultivated such an austere persona they were all but anonymous. While playing live, the members lined up like a row of passport-control officers, with practically no audience banter. Schütte, a literary scholar and hardcore Kraftwerk fan, doesn’t strive to crack the ice that encases the band’s public image. We learn little about the personal lives of Hütter, Schneider (who died in 2020), and company—except about their obsession with bicycling, an avocation that informed their final studio album, 2003’s Tour de France Soundtracks. What the book lacks in personal insight, though, it makes up for with the author’s well-researched understanding of the thinking behind their music. The Kraftwerk philosophy is best summarized by the title of their 1978 album, The Man-Machine: The band strived to capture the bustle of their industrial city (and the roads around it) while contemplating (and lightly satirizing) notions of humanity’s perfectibility. Because they were so savvy about embracing new technologies—they hired an engineer to wrangle the notoriously complicated Synclavier II synthesizer—they were of-the-moment well into the 1980s. Because their songs focused on the integration of man and technology (cars, trains, computers, bicycles), they never became irrelevant. Beyond the theorizing, Schütte suggests, Kraftwerk also paved the way for Germany to develop its own cultural transformation from “genocide [to] a brighter future inaugurated by a post-war generation that had learned its lessons from a terrible history.” A more intimate and thorough band biography would be welcome, but intimacy was never Kraftwerk’s long suit.
A well-turned introduction to a band whose sleek surfaces belied complicated ideas.
