Kraftwerk

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seedy
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Kraftwerk

Post by seedy »

what say you???!?! =()


obvs known about these guys for years but initial impressions were always kind of weak for me....just sounded to 80s and silly....like devo or something lol.

but...one just can't deny the number of artists we love they they've influenced.....so...i dug in again.
still haven't heard a ton of their stuff but Autobahn surely struck me as sounding pretty awesome.

overall i'm learning to see past some of the cliche 80s sounds and listening a bit deeper to hear what else is going on


also this.....
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uhhhhhhh.......coldplay dang you stink
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Re: Kraftwerk

Post by Pandemonium »

I agree Kraftwerk would look weak from todays perspective,
I thought the exact same thing when I started listening all their albums to them 10 years ago.

But in time, if you know enough about electronic music in general, you start to realize they're genius.

First, think about the time, the 70's, they made electronic circuits with their bare hands, and they were classically trained musicians.
The electronic music in concept was there long before them, but in sense of techno, electro & minimal, they were true pioneers - also, very original beats & melodies (even though they look childish today) these are the beats that inspired people like Jeff Mills, Surgeon, Underground Resistance, Juan Atkins and countless others to take the techno to the next level, and then some...

Second, listen to Ruckzuck from their first album (1970) - this is a fucking brilliant psychedelia that Gary masturbates to (I do too :) ) It's simple, raw, and yet spot on!


I mean, come on, 1970 - the year of Miles Davis - Bitches Brew, Led Zeppelin III, The Stooges - Fun House, The Velvet Underground - Loaded, The Beatles - Let It Be, Black Sabbath - Paranoid, Pink Floyd - Atom Heart Mother & The Doors - Morrison Hotel - and Kraftwerk make that first album - it was fucking epic experimental & true underground.

Autobahn (1974) - very important track & album - the popularity changed how people persieved music. It was the first popular track with environmental samples & music in it. Even though very popular, Kraftwerk listeners were still radical and reffered to 'people who listen weird sounds - not music'. This is when Kraftwerk went global, and it took the world (about) 14-15 years to catch up and submerge the planet in electronic beats.

Also, just about Every track from the 6 most popular albums is a legend in the electronic beats genre.
Autobahn (1974)
Radioactivity (1975)
Trans-Europe Express (1977)
The Man-Machine (1978)
Computerworld (1981)
Electric Cafe (1986)

I've seen them LIVE on their last tour in 2005, it was an amazing experience.
The live album from that tour Minimum-Maximum is a must-have.
The Aéro Dynamik (2003) track is a masterpiece by any standards.


And last, but not least, Kraftwerks music is one of the first to catch up with architectural minimalism & machines/robots. They are one of the reasons your wardrobe today is 99% just one colour, maybe two - and not rainbow colored :)
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Ross
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Re: Kraftwerk

Post by Ross »

One of the things about the cliched 80s sounds, as you put it, is to remember that lots of them are from the 70s, so they were very much ahead of their time. I quite like the production, to be honest, I stopped thinking of music as being dated long ago (I like a lot of 80s stuff too, so...). Trans-Europe Express is probably my favourite of theirs, not a bad track on there.
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Re: Kraftwerk

Post by seedy »

good stuff!

yeah as i said it just took a bit for me to get past the 80s type sound and "listen outside of the box" if you will.
there's a lot going on that one would miss if they just glossed over


let's keep the topic here kraftwerk but also add my new journey as of last night YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA

=P

hehe don't yall just love that I'm just NOW giving some of these old legends the time of day?
all of them i've tried in the past but i just wasn't ready....sometimes i have to go back and revisit to see if there are things i can hear that i didn't originally hear on my first try

not sure what to make of YMO just yet.....the instrumental stuff i seem to like a lot.......not so much the stuff with vocals though.
what % would yall say their music has vocals?
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Re: Kraftwerk

Post by Pandemonium »

I don't like YMO at all :)
The only good thing I've heard from them are some 90s techno remixes :)
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Re: Kraftwerk

Post by mcbpete »

You do realise that as a result of making this topic I'm now going to have 'The Model' stuck in my head for days (erm, this if you don't know it) -



The thing is with Kraftwerk is that they're definitely not as po-faced as their on-stage persona makes out, there's a lot of tongue in cheek-ness going on which adds to the fun (fun fun on the autobahn) of listening to their music. Some of the apparent cheesiness is very much deliberate.

And I think a similar light-heartedness is found in some YMO's stuff as well, particularly in their videos e.g.



of which Tim and Eric did made a wonderful homage -



Sorry, video heavy post ....
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Ross
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Re: Kraftwerk

Post by Ross »

mcbpete wrote:fun (fun fun on the autobahn)
'Fahren fahren fahren auf der autobahn', actually.
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Re: Kraftwerk

Post by mcbpete »

Oops- way to misinterpret lyrics Pete .... :oops:
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seedy
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Re: Kraftwerk

Post by seedy »

oh yeah i can totally see how kraftwerk has put out an intended schtick over the years (do yall know what shtick even means over there?)


Pande.......i'm a bit suprised you would say you don't like YMO "at all" considering the wide range of music you listen to.
what don't you like about them? they surely seem to have a kratwerk influence to me.
"absolute ego dance" i find to be fun =P
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Dennis
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Re: Kraftwerk

Post by Dennis »

When I first heard the track 'Spacelab' from 'Man Machine' some years ago (someone putted it on without me knowing what it was, never actually heard the album before) I was sure to hear some contemporary electronic music. It still baffles me how fresh and new most of their stuff is sounding today still. (Just like FSOL :-) )

What I learnt was that the assumption Kraftwerk 'invented Techno Music' is kind of a fairy tale. It´s true that they influenced a hell lot of electronic music makers (esp. in the 90ies the so called IDM/ambient techno movement), I remember having read statements from Aphex Twin, Autechre, Orbital and others where they stated Kraftwerk as a huge influence on their music, but the roots of house & techno music come more from black american subcultures like Disco & Hip Hop.
(Really don´t want this sound too smart-ass, but I read it in a very interesting essay about history of house/techno a while ago, and it sounds quite convincing to me.)
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Re: Kraftwerk

Post by Pandemonium »

@seedy:
I don't like YMO - too pop - too synth (in a 80s bad way) for me - I can take only so much slime :)
Just because they were influenced by Kraftwerk, doesn't mean they got the idea in the right way.
There are thousands of techno/house/tech-house/dance people influenced by Kraftwerk - and they still make bullshit slime music.
Like Pete said - all those fancy pop elements in Kraftwerk tracks were there for sarcasm, but obviously some people got it the wrong way.

@Dennis:
Don't believe everything you read - on the other hand - you can believe your ears :) just take any Kraftwerk album and speed it up a little bit, spice it with just a few effects and you will get every known steady-beat electronic genre - techno, house, industiral, minimal, electro, tech-house, gabber, rave, trance.

The broken beats genres on the other hand, emerged from jazz -> funk -> hip-hop -> turntablism -> jungle -> big beat -> d'n'b.

There are crossovers ofcourse, but the point is all of them were mixing and building on top of each other.

Hip-Hop (The first hip hop record is widely regarded to be The Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight", from 1979) was brought to Detroit/Chicago in the electro style by Afrika Bambaataa in 1980 (Bambaataa Zulu Nation Soul Sonic Force ‎– Zulu Nation Throw Down) and he was building on Kraftwerk samples and adding some funky basslines (the disco lement) - that's the birth of hip-hop, 10 years after Kraftwerk.

True, classic clubber house & techno did appear for the first time in Detroit/Chicago - better said - the name 'techno/house' appeared there for the first time - but the root music was created before in western Europe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techno" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
(The initial take on techno arose from the melding of electronic music, in the style of artists such as Kraftwerk)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_musi ... late_1980s" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
()

Otherwise, if you want to hear/read about the roots of electronic music, do some digging of the following:

1910s- Luigi Russolo - Italian futurist, experimental noise, machines making music

1920s- Leon Theremin - Russian, the inventor of theremin electronic instrument, early experimentalist

1947 - Karlheinz Stockhausen - German composer, ground-breaking work in electronic music.

1948 - Pierre Schaeffer - French, musique concrète and sampling techniques

1950 - Pierre Henry - French composer, pioneer of the musique concrète genre of electronic music.

1954 - Gottfried Michael Koenig - German-Dutch composer, ground-breaking work in electronic music.

1956 - György Ligeti - Hungarian composer working electronic pieces in Vienna, Austria

1956 - Louis & Bebe Barron - US, the first electronic music for magnetic tape, and the first entirely electronic film score (didn't do much else than 1 soundtrack)

1957 - BBC Radiophonic Workshop - UK mega group for experimental electronic sounds

1958 - Luc Ferrari - Italian/French composer, tape music

1960s- Luigi Nono - Italian composer

1960s- John Cage - US composer since the '30s, but didn't start electronic experiments till early '60s

1960s- Philip Glass - US composer, american minimalism

1963 - Terry Riley - US minimalism

1965 - La Monte Young - US minimalism

1969 - Jean-Michel Jarre - French electronic composer, pop-electro

1970s- Clara Rockmore - Russian/Lithuanian theremin maestro

1970 - Kraftwerk - German, experimental electro/techno

1970 - Popol Vuh - German cosmic krautrock

1970 - Tangerine Dream - German, cosmic krautrock, ambient

1970 - Brian Eno - UK, electronic ambient guru producer

1970 - Steve Reich - US minimalism

1971 - Harold Budd - US composer, minimal ambient (friend of Eno)

1971 - Kluster / Cluster / Moebius / Roedelius - German, electronic kraurock experiments

1971 - Conrad Schnitzler - German, electronic noise theories

1972 - Klaus Schulze - German electronic music pioneer

1975 - Bernard Fevre - French experimentalists

1976 - Throbbing Gristle - UK, first industrial music

1970s- Giorgio Moroder - Italian electronic disco producer from the late 70s

1979 - Cabaret Voltaire - UK

1980 - Afrika Bambaataa - US DJ

1981 - Depeche Mode - UK synthpop - yuck!

1982 - Front 242 - Beglian

1982 - Psychic TV & Genesis P-Orridge - UK, psycho-punk-electro

1982 - Steve Roach - US ambient

1982 - Robert Rich - US ambient

1983 - Juan Atkins (Model 500, Infiniti, Cybotron) - US DJ

1986 - Coldcut - UK

1986 - Renegade Soundwave - UK

1986 - Front Line Assembly - Canadian

1986 - Kevin Saunderson - US DJ

1987 - Aphex Twin - UK, idm

1987 - Blake Baxter - US DJ

1987 - Derrick May - US DJ

1988 - Humanoid - UK :)

1988 - Fluke - UK

1988 - 808 State - UK

1988 - Meat Beat Manifesto - UK

1988 - Atom TM (Atom Heart) - German

1988 - Frankie Bones - US techno/house

1988 - Underworld - UK

1989 - Jeff Mills - US DJ

1989 - The Black Dog - UK

1989 - The Orb - UK

1989 - Orbital - UK

1989 - Vidna Obmana - Belgian

1990 - B12 - UK

1990 - Underground Resistance - US techno

1990 - Fatboy Slim - aka Mighty Dub Katz aka Pizzaman aka Beats International aka Freak Power - big beat maestro :)

1990 - DJ Food - UK

1990 - 4 Hero - UK drum'n'bass

1990 - CJ Bolland - UK DJ

1990 - Moby - US

1991 - FSOL - UK :)

1991 - The Prodigy - UK

1991 - Leftfield - UK

1991 - Plastikman - UK/Canada/US/Germany :)

1991 - Apollo 440 - UK, big beat, mixing rock with electronic music

1991 - Autechre - UK

1991 - Plaid - UK

1991 - DJ Shadow - US

1991 - Carl Craig - US DJ

1992 - Pete Namlook - Germany

1992 - Freddy Fresh - US/UK big beat

1992 - DJ Q-Bert - US

1993 - Photek - UK

1993 - The Sabres of Paradise - UK

1993 - µ-Ziq - UK

1993 - Luke Vibert (Wagon Christ, Plug) - UK

1993 - The Chemical Brothers - UK

1993 - Alec Empire (Atari Teenage Riot) - German hard core

1993 - Omni Trio - UK

I probably missed a dozen :) but you get the point :)
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Ross
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Re: Kraftwerk

Post by Ross »

House certainly came from disco and soul, but techno originated when that was fused with more European sounds.
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Re: Kraftwerk

Post by Tito Lozano »

Detroit sound was birth of the called Hard Techno, while Eurotechno style emerged as more groovy trance style...ohh the 90´s!!! time passed and im old for new styles im deep in 90´s



Here in Spain the Route for find Techno appear on The Way between Valencia - Ibiza in 90 and the 2 styles, the hardcore-Makina and the max ref is our Chimo Bayo


Xtasi,Xtano :mrgreen:
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Re: Kraftwerk

Post by seedy »

ok so i've found full albums of all YMO and then some on youtube

i've reached their last album "naughty boys" and this is the first one that i'm really not digging at all
everything before that had some cool stuff i liked.
def the 80s cheese factor but also maybe something worth investigating a bit further ;)


that's a nice list there pande
are you a fan of all you listed there?
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Re: Kraftwerk

Post by Pandemonium »

seedy wrote: that's a nice list there pande
are you a fan of all you listed there?
Yes, all of them :)
Well, maybe not some of the US DJs,
I like their early works, but House & Dance music after 1997-1998 is very very stupid and I don't like it at all.
& Depeche Mode - I HATE Depeche Mode - the most pointless electronic music EVER. :)

Everything else - I have tons of albums here on my HDDs :)
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