Letting Forever Be - a rendezvous in Hackney

There was a brief moment yesterday when, watching another DJ pushing buttons for his set at All Points East festival in London, I nearly denigrated him internally. He was the third of five DJs I would watch and listen to in the afternoon who would all in turn either ‘take it up’ or ‘take it down’, each in their own slightly imitable way. I swiftly realised the hypocrisy of such negativity, having delayed starting a year abroad in Sweden precisely so I could watch even older men press said buttons.

Soon, I may be able to write an article without incorporating or shoehorning references to German electronica, but that time lies ahead. I booked to see Kraftwerk almost as soon as I heard they were performing. I wanted to feel the thumping bass lines, sink into the hypnotic melodies and revere the ‘gesamtkunstwerk’ - universal work of art - before co-founder Ralf Hütter (who turned 76 yesterday) looks at his watch and calls it a day, through choice or circumstance.

Decades of German precision has been channeled into these live performances, emphasising the quality of sound and the visual effects - culminating in a meticulously executed, three dimensional performance which necessitated a degree of audience homogeneity.

At 8pm precisely, the rhythm of ‘Numbers’ began and out they strode, peculiarly clad in Lycra bodysuits, before standing behind their respective podiums of melody, bass, percussion and video effects. The 3-D glasses were quickly utilised as satellites and ‘spacelabs’ flew past us, before eventually landing aptly in Victoria Park. 

Though visually impressed, I felt aurally underwhelmed, with the strength of the thumping bass and rhythm subsuming the softer melodies of the earlier tracks, especially ‘Autobahn’. To my relief, it finally dawned on me during ‘Computer Love’ to pull the plugs out of my ears, initially planted to soften the numbing repetition of earlier DJs. Immediately vindicated, I was consumed by the outro melodies that have resonated with me for so long. So too were the festival goers around me who had, unbeknownst to my deafened self, taken to singing the melodies rather than the lyrics. 

Liberated, we went on, journeying through Models, nuclear disasters and the Tour de France, the latter best embodying the ‘gesamtkunstwerk’ label that Kraftwerk retrospectively applied to themselves. The original single, representing a quintessence of what cycling is perceived to be, evokes the spirit and camaraderie between riders from a bygone age, captured in black and white on the screens behind. As the newer album release is mixed in, the tempo changes, sparser melodies are overloaded onto a pumping beat, the lyrics - now robotic - emphasise the technological infrastructure that now surrounds such a notional sport of the masses. The footage, still in black and white, switches to the modern bike race, a mass of aero helmets and Time Trial handlebars. Fusing our perceptions, emotions and reality, the live performance offered new layers of understanding their ‘gesamtkunstwerk’ through visual artistic interpretation as well as aural. Such nuance would be difficult to articulate in a studio album alone.

The show concluded, as it always has, with Musique Non-Stop, which saw the 3D robotic ether personalities on screen match the outfits of the band members themselves in person. Each member had a brief solo, before walking off stage and bowing to the audience. As Ralf Hutter finished his solo, and indeed the set, he briefly looked at his watch. Perhaps contemplating an encore, but more likely wondering if he’d kept the set list to the precise intended minute, or why his heart rate was marginally elevated compared to normal, reflecting and reminding us of a stereotypically German irony that Kraftwerk themselves have played up to. With little more than an auf wiedersehen he was gone, disappearing down the steps into a strange private sphere that few people over the years have been able to penetrate. He has left behind him a musical legacy to rival great composers of centuries gone by. Less figuratively, he left behind a thronging mass of people racing to cross Victoria Park to witness the Chemical Brothers pick up from where Kraftwerk left off. 

Beginning with ‘Block Rockin’ Beats’, and culminating in ‘Galvanize’, their set was a 90 minute manifesto for ‘big beats’, covering much of their discography (but thankfully excluding ‘The Salmon Dance’). The show was set against psychedelic visual effects - and occasional on-stage Robots - that presumably require a more complete rave experience to understand. Dancing was a necessity and, once the fools around me had realised it would be impossible to get any closer to the big stage, they too settled under a speaker system and set about escaping from the ordinary thoughts of real life.

As a final hurrah before my flight, the day represented as close to a bucket list experience as imaginable, a synthesis of musical pleasure shared by those around me. It was a special day, though one which will personally be slightly framed by the events that follow it. 

Though a ‘gesamtkunstwerk’ can be viewed as a single project in its entirety, it should never be considered indivisible. In recent weeks, I have been asked on multiple occasions to summarise how I’m feeling, with the answer increasingly culminating towards an exhaustible sound rather than a coherent set of words. My impending time abroad should not forever be let loose as an abstract concept on which people can murmur generic words of envy or pride. The visualisation of the big picture that eludes me, as it often does. The hope and excitement of what lies ahead is temporarily obscured by the short term logistical complications and ‘settling’ fears that feel somewhat encompassing. The additional language barrier, which I’m expected to hurdle rather than work around, makes it unique compared to previous experiences. 

My comfort, beyond the well-worn platitudes of other people telling me of ‘adjustment time’, or just ‘having a great time’, is music. It is the sink in which I submerge my head into categorised memories and thoughts, reflecting on matters of the past and present in my own time and space. Kraftwerk create that space, forming both sparse and contained thematic compositions which assure and allay my concerns. They give me time to breathe, rhythms to motivate, and pantheons of influences to join me on strange journeys of curiosity. It was a strange time to see them live. Yet it may also prove to have been the best time to see them live. Heads bobbing, feet tapping, button pressing…

See also:

Mechanised music - the other side of electronica (Review of Wolfgang Flür)

A German Love Letter (First part of what is now a trilogy of Kraftwerk articles)

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Royal Sports Day (A recently commissioned post for derailleur reviewing the road cycling at the 2022 Commonwealth Games)