100 Best Albums
- MAR 1, 1977
- 8 Songs
- The Man-Machine (Remastered) · 1978
- Trans-Europe Express (2009 Remaster) · 1977
- Computer World (Remastered) · 1981
- Computer World (Remastered) · 1981
- The Man-Machine (Remastered) · 1978
- Computer World (Remastered) · 1981
- Tour de France (Remastered) · 2003
- Autobahn (Remastered) · 1974
- Computer World (Remastered) · 1981
- Radio-Activity (Remastered) · 1975
Essential Albums
- By 1981's Computer World, Kraftwerk's quest to become one with their machines was pretty much complete. The vocals are suffused in eerie electronic processing, as though cyborgs had grabbed the mic; the zapping rhythms sound less like drums than bursts of pure electricity. So much pop music can be traced back to their digital Big Bang: They gave electro its syncopated beats, and "Numbers" was sampled on Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock" and scores of other songs. The band's gentle melodies, meanwhile, make their future-past a remarkably reassuring place to visit.
- Stylistically speaking, 1978's The Man Machine could be seen as the sequel to its predecessor, Trans Europe Express. From its fluid synthesizer melodies to its disco-informed electronic beats and Vocoder-assisted robot voices, it's the ultimate example of Kraftwerk's pioneering work with electronics. From "The Robots" to the title track, the band continued to underline their technophile aesthetic and image, perhaps even more succinctly than before. And for as many overtures to pop accessibility as they'd made on previous albums, tunes like "Neon Lights" and "The Model" were the most overtly pop-oriented tracks they'd created up to that time, with the latter becoming an international hit that went all the way to No. 1 in the U.K.
- 100 Best Albums For all its frictionless rhythms and gleaming surfaces, Kraftwerk’s catalog can be a maze-like affair. The Düsseldorf group’s first three albums (1970’s Kraftwerk, 1972’s Kraftwerk 2, and 1973’s Ralf & Florian) have long been unavailable, perhaps because of the gulf between the LPs’ avant-garde rock and the sleek electronic pop for which Kraftwerk would thereafter become famous. As they grew, the group modeled their image and production alike upon the efficiency of business and industry, and like any successful corporation, Kraftwerk were never shy about reinventing themselves. If their electronic period began with the pinging arpeggios of 1974’s Autobahn, their synth-pop era kicked off in earnest with 1975’s Radio-Activity, where they explored shorter songs and sharper hooks. But with 1977’s Trans Europe Express, they perfected their fusion of electronic experimentation and futurist philosophy. Trans Europe Express situated Kraftwerk as something like Germany’s answer to Andy Warhol: In music for the masses, they invented a new kind of conceptual art. The album includes not only some of their most consequential sounds—the title track’s melody would form the basis for Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock,” while the grinding rhythm of “Metal on Metal” would help shape the birth of techno a few years later—but also the ideas that would distinguish Kraftwerk as pop music’s resident intellectuals. As on Autobahn and Radio-Activity, the group remains committed to the fusion of art and everyday life, sourcing drum patterns from the rhythms of train travel on the title track, “Metal on Metal,” and “Abzug,” and sampling the sound of breaking glass on “Showroom Dummies.” In mood, the album is torn between boundless optimism and darker, more doubtful tones. “Europe Endless” and “Trans-Europe Express” both speak to the dream of a unified European culture: Just 22 years after the end of World War II, what once had been an unimaginable utopia now seemed tantalizingly possible, thanks in part to the technological progress that powered Kraftwerk’s own synthesizers. At the same time, songs like “The Hall of Mirrors” and “Showroom Dummies” directly address the ambiguity between appearance and reality, suggesting that digitally enabled artifice might not be all it’s cracked up to be. Ultimately, Kraftwerk refuse to come down on one side or another; it’s up to the listener to decide whether the blissful vocoders of the closing track, “Endless Endless,” are genuinely hopeful or a cheeky glimpse at a post-human future.
Albums
Artist Playlists
- The electronic music pioneers who predicted a man-machine convergence.
- Techno, disco, and hip-hop built on a stiffly funky foundation.
- The machines have soul.
More To Hear
- German geniuses invent techno and electrify hip-hop.
- The electronic band's impact on music from the '70s and beyond.
- How Kraftwerk influenced hip-hop.
About Kraftwerk
Long before computers became commonplace in recording studios, Kraftwerk invented the idea of a post-human musical future. The German group didn’t set out to be electronic-music pioneers: Founding members Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter met as conservatory students in Düsseldorf in the late ‘60s, and their self-titled 1970 debut as Kraftwerk—German for “power plant”—was in keeping with the shaggy avant-rock of the late ’60s. But postwar Germany was modernizing rapidly, a process Kraftwerk captured in their increasingly streamlined music. On 1974’s Autobahn, the group channeled the nation’s freeways—a metaphor for freedom—into sleek, hypnotic grooves, including a 22-minute title track that sounded like infinity distilled. Synths and programmed rhythms increasingly came to the fore, and the group’s influence grew: Trans-Europe Express, from 1977, introduced textures and pulses that would soon ripple across nascent American hip-hop and Detroit techno, while 1978’s The Man-Machine drew the robotic blueprint for synth-pop and New Wave. While new material slowed in the following decades, the group remained active across various lineup changes, masterminding new audiovisual techniques in their extensive tours (which continued under Hütter’s direction even after Schneider’s death from cancer in 2020). Kraftwerk’s legacy is incalculable; their synthetic DNA is a part of dance music, pop, rap, and virtually every style of music that requires a power adapter.
- ORIGIN
- Düsseldorf, Germany
- FORMED
- 1970
- GENRE
- Electronic