91–100 of 159 posts
Deutsche Bank
FBI
Scotland Yard
Business
Money
Numbers
People
Here is Ralf und Florian's patent for the electronic drum machine: https://patents.google.com/patent/USD244717S/en
These guys were the musical version of Jules Verne or HG Wells. Truly visionary.
Legend. I saw Kraftwerk live years ago and it was one of the most overwhelming performances I’ve ever seen in my life. Beneath the bouncy, poppy hooks there was a massive darkness — the pairing of visuals with the music really drove that home. (The only other live musical performance that I recall giving me a similar feeling was the band ‘Godspeed You Black Emperor‘, who also made use of projected imagery in such a t…
Same! I wasn't expecting much, but they were in the top few concerts I've ever seen. Here's a recentish live performance of "Computer Love" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2SklZ5mNpg
Legend. I saw Kraftwerk live years ago and it was one of the most overwhelming performances I’ve ever seen in my life. Beneath the bouncy, poppy hooks there was a massive darkness — the pairing of visuals with the music really drove that home. (The only other live musical performance that I recall giving me a similar feeling was the band ‘Godspeed You Black Emperor‘, who also made use of projected imagery in such a t…
I've also seen them a few times, twice open air and what surprised my most was the absolute insane sound quality. They are insane perfectionists and I was just blown away.
Arguably the most important and influential "band", which ever existed.
My favorite song by kraftwerk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWsQgmq-fNs
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ha - to be fair, it was, "Ralf, Florian, and two other guys" from the beginning - they made it into a quartet to mimic acts like the Beatles in a weird way. Of course, "the two other guys" deny that.
That's not actually true Klaus Dinger the drummer was a permanent member. There was even a brief period where it was Florian and Klaus Dinger in the band but Ralf had quit. And both Conny Plank their legendary producer and Ralf thought very highly of him. Klaus was known for pioneering a hypnotic minimalist beat known as "motorik." Klaus and Michael Rother left Kraftwerk to form Neu! another hugely influential German…
My favorite song by kraftwerk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWsQgmq-fNs
Huh, I didn't realize they localized these. The Japanese texts say things like "Fukushima radiation, today and forever, stop it now".
Which is why this is my favorite version of the song. They kind of evolved it with the Hiroshima accident.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They often designed the units in outline but other people implemented the ideas - like the Synthanorma sequencer, which was a product in its own right and eventually evolved into the Doepfer MAQ. There's some mystery about who designed their robo-speech box [1], because Schneider (and colleagues) actually patented it. [1] Not the vocoder, but the chip-speech system used on The Mix.
Synthorama was created by Matten and Wiechers of Bonn[1] Nobody in Kraftwerk was an electrical engineer. I am not sure how you "outline" a synthesizer unless you mean writing a schematic, something nobody in the band could do. I'm not trying to detract from their genius in any way but the idea that they created their own gear is largely folklore. [1] https://sdiy.info/wiki/Synthesizerstudio_Bonn
If we're willing to give Steve Jobs credit for the iPhone I think we should be equally willing to give Schneider & company credit for their ideas that were instrumental - (heh) - in moving the synth field forward. The fact that many of their sounds were novel when first recorded is the strongest proof of their original contributions, if it has merely been off the shelf hardware created by others then this would not have been the case, you'd have heard those sounds from other artists before then.
RIP. A titan of music. Not only Kraftwerk are among my favorite artists, but my 8-month-old baby loves Autobahn.
My three year old nephew would ask to play the "robot man", as I referred to Kraftwerk for a while. Then would walk around swinging his arms like a robot to "We are the robots". I, having my "cool uncle" aspirations, was almost tearing up.