Monday, February 20, 2012
Kraftwerk
The creators of Kraftwerk met at school while attending Robert Schumann Hochschule in Germany. After ten years of performing they finally decided to officially form the band Kraftwerk. This group would be revolutionary to the sound music and its influence can be heard throughout music.
At the time everyone was copying what American and British bands were trying to accomplish. But Kraftwerk wanted to step outside of the box and create a unique sound. While making there first three albums they used traditional instruments to create the music but added effects and distorted the sound coming out of the instruments.
This band always had underground success but there big commercial break came in 1974. Their single “Autobahn” reached number 11 on the Uk charts. This added to listeners for Kraftwerk. This took them from underground to almost mainstream. It also didn't do that bad in the US the same single got as high as 25 on Billboards hot 100. Two big accomplishments for the band especially since what they were doing musically was so different from what was popular at the time. This album was different because it was actually a concept album. A few albums that came after that were actually under the same light. This album interesting because it was all based on traveling the expressways of Germany. This album was innovative on so many levels the technology used to record this album was also very advanced. They used pads, a minimoog synth, and vocoder during the recording process.
After going on their world tour they went back to work. They began to work new music. They then released Radio-Activity which really didn't do well anywhere but France. I believe the band expected this album to be a lot better than it was. After this album can one that really didn't do well at first but over time received a lot of credit for being one of the best albums of all time. Rolling Stone ranked this album as one of the 500 greatest albums.
I believe this band made a very influential impact on the world of music and as a audio professional I believe that they added new layers to the way we choose to record music. I believe that this band has made its mark on this society of music.
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Hey Phil,
ReplyDeleteI am definitely inspired and influenced by these guys as well. I had no idea that we were going to talk about this group. I find it interesting that Africa Bombatta sampled Kraftwork’s music, flipped it and turned it into Planet Rock. I actually thought that Africa Bombatta made Planet Rock up from scratch. I slightly disappointed a little bit but I still dig the song as if he did. I was tripping out when I heard the original sample from Numbers off of the Computer World album. If I was in charge of that Rolling Stone list I would have put Radio “Activity” in the top 100. Another one of those legendary group that'll go down in history as one of the greatest.