Mechanised music - the other side of electronica.

Tonight was supposed to be a night to stay in, to rest up ahead of a short camping trip to Wales, but circumstance dictated otherwise. Or rather, I decided otherwise. Notified by a parent of Wolfgang Flür playing up the road in Kings Heath, I adjusted what formative plans I had, and headed up said street.



Of the four key Kraftwerk members, Flür was the one that bailed first, and has been out of their orbit the longest. His departure wasn’t clean. Having not been credited on his last two albums with the group, he was likely already ostracised within the group. Feelings further soured when remaining members sued him to prevent the release of his autobiography, aptly titled ‘I was a Robot’. 

Subsequently, there has been a reinvention of sorts, from Robot to Music Soldier. He lent on his robotic past heavily, the screen behind showing intimate photos of Kraftwerk outside the studio in civvies - occasionally even smiling. Yet this soldier was distinct, actively promoting the difference between person and performing artist. Tonight, just weeks before his 75th birthday, he was a man invigorated. Dancing on stage, parodying his past life, he was outlining a new rhythm to both define himself by, and belittle who he used to be.



Promoting his latest album - which I earlier concluded was good, if somewhat unoriginal - Flür was agile and at ease, pumping his trance and house mixes to mass approval. His first track on the set list sampled ‘Home Computer’ with a riff that hung on from its 1981 release to define US hip hop and techno for a generation and beyond. (Detroit techno’s godfather, Juan Atkins, collaborated with Flür on his album) My personal highlight came halfway through the set, with a club mix of Neon Lights. For me, it’s an emotive track, its melodies reminding me of the difference and distance between suburbia and city that consciously arose with leaving home. Tonight it became a dance anthem to captivate me into another world, it’s new, heavier beat sustaining me through what otherwise could’ve felt melancholic.

Whereas Kraftwerk have become increasingly minimalist, fulfilling co-founder Ralf Hütter’s ambition to become a ‘gesamtkunstwerk’ (complete work of art) of machine music, Flür instead sits within existing trends of electronica. Using machines to carry audiences off their feet, Flür utilised the very drum machines which made his role as Kraftwerk’s percussionist redundant. Throughout the set, his varying tempos echoed both the work of The Orb and the Chemical Brothers, testament both to his and Kraftwerk’s legacy, and also indicative of where Flür values electronic music as a genre. Thematically, there was otherwise little difference between Flür and his former band, topics of robots, trains, cars and war remained ever present.

Tonight was an aural treat, and a signed Autobahn vinyl sleeve serves as icing on the most delightfully spontaneous of cakes. In Wales, I will likely be far away from most notions of electronica, with even phone signal being reserved only for those with the most divine of network providers. But tonight, I was witness and part of a pounding machination of sound, that might just sustain me before a return to conventional civilisation. Danke schön Wolfgang, the pleasure was mine.



See also:
A German Love Letter

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