A fond farewell to Kraftwerk and all that?
Kraftwerk were almost one of the first bands I saw live, by which I mean they played Norwich UEA in June 1992, when I was just 14, and I almost went to see them, before deciding the £12 — or whatever it was — was just too much for my adolescent wallet and stayed at home instead. As the years passed and the cult of Kraftwerk grew, both inside and out of my head, my decision annoyed me more and more.
So when the band announced they were playing London in 2004, I bought tickets to both the Royal Festival Hall and Brixton Academy gigs, with the latter, in particular, one of the best concerts I have ever seen, a wonder of clean, pounding sound and audience rapture. I saw them again that year at the Benícassim festival, down by Valencia, and considered myself sated, the UEA disaster more than made up for.
I didn’t see Kraftwerk the next few times I could have done. They played Sónar and I was elsewhere; they played the Liceu opera house in Barcelona and tickets were north of €100. But when the festival Terramar announced Kraftwerk would be playing Sitges — Sitges! — in July 2023 I had to go. To give some context, Sitges is where my wife and her family are from, a holiday town 40km down the coast from Barcelona that is known for being very LGBTQIA+ friendly and the perfect place for a family getaway but not so much at all for electronic music pioneers. Playing the Terramar festival alongside Kraftwerk this year are Tom Jones, Malú and Zucchero Sugar Fornaciari, a most unlikely bunch, which got me wondering who on earth would go and see Kraftwerk in Sitges?
I was, to be honest, slightly reticent. The criticism frequently voiced of Kraftwerk in 2023 is that under the direction of Ralf Hütter — the only original member still in the band — they have become a parody of their former, progressive selves, a touring dinosaur content to pump out the old hits for anyone who’s paying them. And there is the smallest touch of truth to this. Their set at Sitges contains all of the old hits — The Model, Computer Love, Tour De France, The Man Machine et al — with the newest songs taken from 2003’s Tour De France Soundtracks. The one “new”song they play — Tango — has never been officially released but they have been playing it since the 1990s. (And, I’m sorry to say, it is appalling, a three-note bass line trudge through 90s techno that is, by some distance, the worst thing they play tonight.)
And yet…. there is still a sense of adventure and — dare I say it — love of music to Kraftwerk’s live set. The set list includes lesser known songs like Airwaves — its pumped up and muscular sound a real highlight — Planet of Visions and Electric Café and the versions of the well-known songs they play aren’t quite the same as on their 2017 live album 3D: Der Katalog, perhaps because Kraftwerk are notably playing live, with the odd mistake in evidence — a keyboard line slightly fluffed, for example. (Kraftwerk have recently changed their live line up, with Georg Bongartz coming in and Falk Grieffenhagen shifting to a more musical role. And this may have something to do with it.)
At the same time, (Tango aside) Kraftwerk still sound perfectly contemporary, in a way you just can’t say for most older touring bands. You could happily play a good 95% of their current live set in a techno club and people would dance to it, without considering its historical origins. (Which, perhaps, also says something about the state of techno.) The same can’t be said for, says 1980s Chicago house, as much as I love it.
That’s hugely impressive — and it takes work, sonically, to make sure things stay up to date. Sure, I would probably prefer it if Hütter et al were working away on new music in the Kling Klang studio. But the sheer 2023 shine of their current live set does at least suggest that their constant studio tinkering is paying dividend. They look and sound absolutely spectacular, crushingly loud but utterly free of distortion, the vast screen behind them resplendent as a fluctuating wall of modernistic art. And, yes, I’d love a Kraftwerk set that was bathed in new material. But I’d also be pissed off if they didn’t play The Model. And I suspect most people feel the same.
But what really wins me over in SItges is the passion you see in Ralf Hütter’s face when he sings these songs from another millennium. The Sitges gig is a small one, and relatively empty for that, and so I manage to get very close to the stage, from where I can spy on Hütter. And, honestly, if that isn’t a kind of historically-infused passion on his face while he sings Neon Lights for the n hundredeth time, then he is an even better actor than musician. It helps, perhaps, that Kraftwerk have some distinctly humanising technical difficulties with Hütter’s light suit, which forces a brief pause in between songs, in which Hütter addresses the audience, responding to someone shout of “Music” with a shy-sounding “non stop”, to general delight. It would be easy for someone in his position to cruise on autopilot. But for tonight, at least, the passion seems very much to be there.
None of which is to suggest that Kraftwerk are beyond criticism in 2023. I would dearly love Wolfgang Flür and Karl Bartos — who were very important parts of the Kling Klang machine — to have some kind of role in 21st Century Kraftwerk. And, as my wife pointed out, it was a particularly masculine concert, all Men and their machines, with the Model models the only women to appear on the screen. (Madame Curie also appears in name.) But, for me, this concert proved that Kraftwerk remain a vital life force in their seventh decade of existence.
Will I ever see them again? I’d like to. I’ve never seen the Kraftwerk 3D show, for example, or heard The Telephone Call live. But Hütter is almost 77 years old and, much as he might like the idea of Kraftwerk continuing as a music machine, with none of its original members, the collective idea driving the group ever forward, I’m not sure it will continue after his death. But if this was a goodbye to Kraftwerk, a group I have loved for almost 30 years and almost went to see at 14, then it was an emotional one.
This review was taken from my Line Noise Substack — if you like it, why not sign up here? https://linenoise.substack.com/
