Three Kraftwerk songs that still sound like the future
Kraftwerk were not the first band to make electronic music, but they were the first to gift pop an electronic language.
Long preserved as the instruments of avant-garde academia or 1970s prog wizards, it took the Düsseldorf technicians to wrest synthesisers away from the cosmic toys of psychedelia or lofty university research experiments to the electronic template as we understand it.
Further illustrated by their mannequin look and sturdy, Germanic tongue, Kraftwerk’s pioneering electronic records would burnish the foundations of major future branches across post-punk, industrial, techno, house, and hip-hop, among scores of indirect influences. While never quite looking to explicitly soundtrack the future, Kraftwerk’s hearty embrace of the new resulted in work that sounded unlike anything else, owing nothing to America’s blues tradition and a million miles away from the classic rock gyrations across the day’s arenas.
It’s why the punks loved them. In their search for the new, Kraftwerk avoided all the clichés of the decade’s pop charts and unearthed a style set to look forever forward over nostalgic curdle. It’s the unmistakable sound that forever colours Kraftwerk’s golden album run, the zest of a band looking toward the electronic hinterland with the assured optimism of their own musical mission.
Boasting one of the most pioneering bodies of work in pop, we select three cuts from the Kraftwerk oeuvre that will still dazzle, fascinate, and transport well after the old German masters are long gone and their robot imitators soldier on with their legacy.
Three Kraftwerk songs that still sound like the future:
‘Radioactivity’
Release Date: November 1975 | Producer: Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider | Album: Radio-Activity
Mining a realm of stinging austerity before the post-punks or even David Bowie’s synth-soaked excursions in Berlin, Kraftwerk’s second album of their officially recognised back-catalogue steps into a cavernous expanse they’d never quite probe again, a sonic vacuum of radio waves, Morse code, and electrical signals all zap and spark in the recesses of Radio-Activity’s black subterranean.
While not a dark album, Kraftwerk certainly conjures some spooky cuts. Draped in icy shimmer and phantasmic vocal choirs, the gelid ‘Radioactivity’ hasn’t aged an iota in the over 50 years since its drop. Minimal and frosty, its chunky Minimoog basslines, whip snares, and twinkling air of remote distress score a timeless atmosphere to Radio-Activity’s thrilling title track, a strangely wide-eyed wonder for the Volksempfänger airwaves, clashing with the unease over nuclear science, spelling an electronic drama that will still bite and stir in equal measure for years to come.
‘The Hall of Mirrors’
Release Date: March 1977 | Producer: Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider | Album: Trans-Europe Express
Before the cybermen automata that would establish their visual identity from the 1980s, Kraftwerk doggedly eschewed the flares and long-haired denim of the rock world, seeking tailored suits and cropped haircuts as the uniforme de rigueur befitting their new musical language. With the help of the customised analogue Synthanorma Sequenzer for new melody lines, the Düsseldorf quartet eagerly weaved new cascades of synthesised elegance reflecting their immaculately groomed aesthetic.
Such glittering dynamism is captured in the exquisite ‘The Hall of Mirrors’. An eerie meditation on distorted realities, Kraftwerk’s coax a rumbling bass percolated with flickering sequencers that seem to echo with palatial grandeur across its near transportive eight minutes. ‘The Hall of Mirrors’ destiny as an enduring slice of futurist pop lies less in the pioneering electronic arrangements but in its universal portrait of humanity’s blurred lapse into artificial identities, a tendency that looks to only grow in the online world.
‘The Man-Machine’
Release Date: April 1978 | Producer: Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider | Album: The Man-Machine
When Kraftwerk are at their musical best, a figurative lid is lifted from their synthpop foundations, and glowing can be seen all their aural schematics, architecture, and electronic formulae that fuel their visionary avant-pop propulsion. Not one sonic component or arrangement is without necessity; their classic output masterful executions in considered essentiality when building their towering synth pieces.
A case in point is ‘The Man-Machine’. Boiled down to its most somatic functions, the namesake album’s tough buy sinewy groove skulks with mammoth swagger underneath the staid veneer, bristling with hip-hop energy on the album’s funky closer. Kraftwerk’s proto-techno strut is so viscerally refined and rid of any sonic impurities, it’s impossible to envisage future generations able to resist ‘The Man-Machine’s robotic rhythms for long, a flash of Kraftwerk’s brilliance and sounding lightyears ahead well into the far future.
