William Cook

How Kraftwerk did more to shape modern music than anyone since the Beatles

Normally, few things in life are quite so tedious as listening to a bunch of academics discussing pop music. However this week’s Kraftwerk Konferenz at Aston University may be the chinwag that refutes this rule. Why so? Well, speakers includes former Kraftwerk member Wolfgang Flur, plus Stephen Mallinder from Cabaret Voltaire and Rusty Egan of Visage – remember them? OK, so these real-life pop stars are still outnumbered by a host of earnest academics, delivering lectures with mind-numbing titles like ‘Kraftwerk and the Issue of Post-Human Authenticity’ and ‘Kraftwerk and the Cultural Studies of Cycling’. However if any band can withstand two days of pointy-headed discourse, it must be Kraftwerk. Because, improbably, these po-faced kraut-rockers have become the most influential pop group of all time.

Forty-five years since they started out, Kraftwerk’s influence is everywhere, in every pop genre you can think of – and quite a few you can’t. David Bowie was first in line, bigging up Kraftwerk founder Florian Schneider on his Heroes LP way back in 1977. New Order sampled Schneider’s music on their snyth anthem ‘Blue Monday’. REM are one of hundreds of groups who’ve followed suit. Hip-hop, house and techno are inconceivable without Kraftwerk. They were the first band to embrace modern technology – not only on the instruments they played, but in the subject matter of their songs.

Today urban alienation is a common theme in pop music, and Kraftwerk’s mechanical cadences have become the soundtrack of our lives. Kraftwerk’s robotic house style is so ubiquitous, it’s almost become invisible. Yet back in the 1970s they seemed so avant-garde, it was almost impossible to take them seriously. ‘Are these people for real?’ I wondered, when my (much cooler) stepbrother brought home a copy of their landmark LP, Trans-Europe Express.

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