Formation and early years (1970–1973) Florian Schneider (flutes, synthesizers, violin) and
Ralf Hütter (organ, synthesizers) met as students at the
Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf in the late 1960s, participating in the German
experimental music and art scene of the time, which
Melody Maker jokingly dubbed "
krautrock". They joined a quintet known as
Organisation, which released one album,
Tone Float in 1970, issued on
RCA Records in the UK, and split shortly thereafter. Schneider became interested in synthesizers, deciding to acquire one in 1970. While visiting an exhibition in their hometown about visual artists
Gilbert and George, they see "two men wearing suits and ties, claiming to bring art into everyday life. The same year, Hütter and Schneider started bringing everyday life into art and form Kraftwerk". Early Kraftwerk line-ups from 1970 to 1974 fluctuated, as Hütter and Schneider worked with around a half-dozen other musicians during the preparations for and the recording of three albums and sporadic live appearances, including guitarist
Michael Rother and drummer
Klaus Dinger, who left to form
Neu!. The band released two free-form experimental rock albums,
Kraftwerk (1970) and
Kraftwerk 2 (1972). The albums were mostly exploratory musical improvisations played on a variety of traditional instruments including guitar, bass, drums, organ, flute, and violin. Post-production modifications to these recordings were used to distort the sound of the instruments, particularly audio-tape manipulation and multiple dubbings of one instrument on the same track. Both albums are purely instrumental. Live performances from 1972 to 1973 were mostly made as a duo, using a simple beat-box-type electronic
drum machine with preset rhythms taken from an electric organ. Occasionally, they performed with bass players as well. These shows were mainly in Germany, with occasional shows in France. With
Ralf & Florian, released in 1973, Kraftwerk began to rely more heavily on synthesizers and drum machines. Although almost entirely instrumental, the album marks Kraftwerk's first use of the
vocoder in the song "Ananas Symphonie" (Pineapple Symphony,) which became one of its musical signatures. According to English music journalist
Simon Reynolds, Kraftwerk were influenced by what he called the "adrenalized insurgency" of Detroit artists of the late '60s
MC5 and
the Stooges. The input, expertise, and influence of producer and engineer
Konrad "Conny" Plank was highly significant in the early years of Kraftwerk. Plank also worked with many of the other leading German electronic acts of that time, including members of
Can,
Neu!,
Cluster, and
Harmonia. As a result of his work with Kraftwerk, Plank's studio near
Cologne became one of the most sought-after studios in the late 1970s. Plank co-produced the first four Kraftwerk albums. Hütter and Schneider invested in updating their studio, thus lessening their reliance on outside producers. At this time the painter and graphic artist
Emil Schult became a regular collaborator, designing artwork, cowriting lyrics, and accompanying the group on tour. Despite some innovations in touring, Kraftwerk took a break from live performances after the
Radio-Activity tour of 1976.
Trans-Europe Express, The Man-Machine and Computer World (1977–1982) After having finished the Radio-Activity tour Kraftwerk began recording
Trans-Europe Express (German:
Trans-Europa-Express) at the Kling Klang Studio.
Trans-Europe Express was mixed at the
Record Plant Studios in Los Angeles. It was around this time that Hütter and Schneider met David Bowie at the Kling Klang Studio. A collaboration was mentioned in an interview (
Brian Eno) with Hütter, but it never materialised. The release of
Trans-Europe Express in March 1977 was marked with an extravagant train journey used as a press conference by EMI France. The album won a disco award in New York later that year. In May 1978 Kraftwerk released
The Man-Machine (German:
Die Mensch-Maschine), recorded at the Kling Klang Studio. Due to the complexity of the recording, the album was mixed at Studio Rudas in Düsseldorf. The band hired sound engineer Leanard Jackson from Detroit to work with Joschko Rudas on the final mix.
The Man-Machine was the first Kraftwerk album where
Karl Bartos was cocredited as a songwriter. The cover, produced in black, white and red, was inspired by Russian artist
El Lissitzky and the
Suprematism movement. Gunther Frohling photographed the group for the cover, a now-iconic image which featured the quartet dressed in red shirts and black ties. After it was released Kraftwerk did not release another album or tour for three years. In May 1981 Kraftwerk released
Computer World (German:
Computerwelt) on
EMI Records. It was recorded at Kling Klang Studio between 1978 and 1981. Much of this time was spent modifying the studio to make it portable so the band could take it on tour. Some of the electronic vocals on
Computer World were generated using a
Texas Instruments language translator. "
Computer Love" was released as a single backed with the
Man-Machine track "
The Model". Radio DJs were more interested in the
B-side so the single was repackaged by EMI and re-released with "The Model" as the A-side. The single reached number one in the UK, making "The Model" Kraftwerk's most successful song in that country. As a result, the
Man-Machine album also became a success in the UK, peaking at number 9 in the
album chart in February 1982. The band's live set focused increasingly on song-based material, with greater use of vocals and the use of sequencing equipment for both percussion and music. In contrast to their cool and controlled image, the group used sequencers interactively, which allowed for live improvisation. Ironically, Kraftwerk did not own a computer at the time of recording
Computer World. Kraftwerk returned to live performance with the
Computer World tour of 1981, where the band effectively packed up its entire Kling Klang studio and took it along on the road. It also made greater use of live visuals including back-projected slides and films synchronised with the music as the technology developed, the use of hand-held miniaturised instruments during the set, and the use of replica
mannequins of themselves to perform on stage during the song "The Robots".
Electric Café (1982–1989) In 1982 Kraftwerk began to work on a new album that initially had the working title
Technicolor but due to trademark issues was changed to
Electric Café for its original release in 1986 (for a remastered re-release in 2009, it was retitled again after its original working title,
Techno Pop). One of the songs from these recording sessions was "
Tour de France", which EMI released as a single in 1983. This song was a reflection of the band's new-found obsession with cycling. After the physically demanding
Computer World tour, Ralf Hütter had been looking for forms of exercise that fitted in with the image of Kraftwerk; subsequently he encouraged the group to become vegetarians and take up cycling. "Tour de France" included sounds that followed this theme including bicycle chains, gear mechanisms and the breathing of the cyclist. At the time of the single's release Ralf Hütter tried to persuade the rest of the band that they should record a whole album based on cycling. The other members of the band were not convinced, and the theme was left to the single alone. "Tour de France" was released in German and French. The vocals of the song were recorded on the Kling Klang Studio stairs to create the right atmosphere. "Tour de France" was featured in the 1984 film ''
Breakin''', showing the influence that Kraftwerk had on
West Coast Hip Hop. In May or June 1982, during the recording of "Tour de France", Ralf Hütter was involved in a serious cycling accident. During 1983 Wolfgang Flür was beginning to spend less time in the studio. Since the band began using sequencers his role as a drummer was becoming less frequent. He preferred to spend his time travelling with his girlfriend. Flür was also experiencing artistic difficulties with the band. Though he toured the world with Kraftwerk as a drummer in 1981, his playing does not appear on that year's
Computer World or on the 1986 album
Electric Café. In 1987 he made his last appearance with the band in "
The Telephone Call" music video. As he declined to perform with the band in its Italian concerts in 1990 he was replaced on-stage by
Fritz Hilpert.
The Mix (1990–1999) After years of withdrawal from live performance Kraftwerk began to tour Europe more frequently. In February 1990 the band played a few secret shows in Italy. Karl Bartos left the band shortly afterwards. The next proper tour was in 1991, for the album
The Mix. Hütter and Schneider wished to continue the synth-pop quartet style of presentation, and recruited
Fernando Abrantes as a replacement for Bartos. Abrantes left the band shortly after though. In late 1991, long-time Kling Klang Studio sound engineer Henning Schmitz was brought in to finish the remainder of the tour and to complete a new version of the quartet that remained active until 2008. In 1997 Kraftwerk made a famous appearance at the dance festival
Tribal Gathering held in England. In 1998, the group toured the US and Japan for the first time since 1981, along with shows in Brazil and
Argentina. Three new songs were performed during this period and a further two tested in soundchecks, which remain unreleased. Following this trek, the group decided to take another break. In July 1999 the single "Tour de France" was reissued in Europe by EMI after it had been
out of print for several years. It was released for the first time on CD in addition to a repressing of the 12-inch vinyl single. Both versions feature slightly altered artwork that removed the faces of Flür and Bartos from the four-man cycling paceline depicted on the original cover. In 1999 ex-member Flür published his autobiography in Germany,
Ich war ein Roboter. Later English-language editions of the book were titled
Kraftwerk: I Was a Robot. In 1999, Kraftwerk were commissioned to create an
a cappella jingle for the
Hannover Expo 2000 world's fair in Germany. The jingle was subsequently developed into the single "
Expo 2000", which was released in December 1999, and remixed and re-released as "Expo Remix" in November 2000.
Tour de France Soundtracks and touring the world (2000–2009) , February 2004 In August 2003 the band released
Tour de France Soundtracks, its first album of new material since 1986's
Electric Café. In January and February 2003, before the release of the album, the band started the extensive
Minimum-Maximum world tour, using four customised
Sony VAIO laptop computers, effectively leaving the entire Kling Klang studio at home in Germany. The group also obtained a new set of transparent video panels to replace its four large projection screens. This greatly streamlined the running of all of the group's sequencing, sound-generating, and visual-display software. From this point, the band's equipment increasingly reduced manual playing, replacing it with interactive control of sequencing equipment. Hütter retained the most manual performance, still playing musical lines by hand on a controller keyboard and singing live vocals and having a repeating
ostinato. Schneider's live vocoding had been replaced by software-controlled speech-synthesis techniques. In November, the group made a surprising appearance at the MTV European Music Awards in
Edinburgh, Scotland, performing "Aerodynamik". The same year a promotional box set titled
12345678 (subtitled
The Catalogue) was issued, with plans for a proper commercial release to follow. The box featured
remastered editions of the group's eight core studio albums, from
Autobahn to
Tour de France Soundtracks. This long-awaited box-set was eventually released in a different set of remasters in November 2009. In June 2005 the band's first-ever official live album,
Minimum-Maximum, which was compiled from the shows during the band's tour of spring 2004, received praise from
NME. The album contained reworked tracks from existing studio albums. This included a track titled "Planet of Visions" that was a reworking of "Expo 2000". In support of this release, Kraftwerk made another quick sweep around the
Balkans with dates in
Serbia,
Bulgaria,
Macedonia,
Turkey, and Greece. In December, the
Minimum-Maximum DVD was released. During 2006, the band performed at festivals in Norway, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Spain, Belgium, and Germany. In April 2008 the group played three shows in US cities
Minneapolis,
Milwaukee, and
Denver, and were a coheadliner at the
Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. This was its second appearance at the festival since 2004. Further shows were performed in Ireland, Poland,
Ukraine, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore later that year. The touring quartet consisted of Ralf Hütter, Henning Schmitz,
Fritz Hilpert, and video technician Stefan Pfaffe, who became an official member in 2008. Original member Florian Schneider was absent from the lineup. Hütter stated that he was working on other projects. On 21 November, Kraftwerk officially confirmed Florian Schneider's departure from the band;
The Independent commented: "There is something brilliantly Kraftwerkian about the news that Florian Schneider, a founder member of the German electronic pioneers, is leaving the band to pursue a solo career. Many successful bands break up after just a few years. It has apparently taken Schneider and his musical partner, Ralf Hütter, four decades to discover musical differences." Kraftwerk's headline set at Global Gathering in Melbourne, Australia, on 22 November was cancelled moments before it was scheduled to begin, due to Fritz Hilpert experiencing a medical emergency. In 2009, Kraftwerk performed concerts with special 3D background graphics in Wolfsburg, Germany; Manchester, UK; and Randers, Denmark. Members of the audience were able to watch this multimedia part of the show with 3D glasses, which were given out. During the Manchester concert (part of the 2009
Manchester International Festival) four members of the GB cycling squad (
Jason Kenny,
Ed Clancy,
Jamie Staff and
Geraint Thomas) rode around the Velodrome while the band performed "Tour de France". The group also played several festival dates, the last being at the
Bestival 2009 in September, on the
Isle of Wight. 2009 also saw the release of
The Catalogue box set in November. It is a 12-inch album-sized box set containing all eight remastered CDs in cardboard slipcases, as well as LP-sized booklets of photographs and artwork for each individual album.
The Catalogue and continued touring (2010–2017) , 2008 Although not officially confirmed, Ralf Hütter suggested that a second boxed set of their first three experimental albums—
Kraftwerk,
Kraftwerk 2 and
Ralf and Florian—could be on its way, possibly seeing commercial release after their next studio album: "We've just never really taken a look at those albums. They've always been available, but as really bad
bootlegs. Now we have more artwork.
Emil has researched extra contemporary drawings, graphics, and photographs to go with each album, collections of paintings that we worked with, and drawings that Florian and I did. We took a lot of
Polaroids in those days." Kraftwerk also released an
iOS app called Kraftwerk Kling Klang Machine. The Lenbach House in Munich exhibited some Kraftwerk 3-D pieces in Autumn 2011. Kraftwerk performed three concerts to open the exhibit. Kraftwerk played at Ultra Music Festival in Miami on 23 March 2012. Initiated by
Klaus Biesenbach, the
Museum of Modern Art of New York organised an exhibit titled
Kraftwerk – Retrospective 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 where the band performed their studio discography from
Autobahn to
Tour de France over the course of eight days to sell-out crowds. The exhibit later toured to the
Tate Gallery as well as to K20 in Düsseldorf. Kraftwerk performed at the No Nukes 2012 Festival in Tokyo, Japan. Kraftwerk was also going to play at the Ultra Music Festival in
Warsaw, but the event was cancelled; instead, Kraftwerk performed at Way Out West in
Gothenburg. A limited-edition version of the
Catalogue box set was released during the retrospective, restricted to 2000 sets. Each box was individually numbered and inverted the colour scheme of the standard box. In December, Kraftwerk stated on its website that it would be playing its
Catalogue in Düsseldorf and at London's Tate Modern. Kraftwerk tickets were priced at £60 in London, but fans compared that to the $20 ticket price for tickets at New York's MoMA in 2012, which caused consternation. Even so, the demand for the tickets at The Tate was so high that it shut down the website. In March 2013, the band was not allowed to perform at a music festival in China due to unspecified "political reasons". In an interview in June after performing the eight albums of
The Catalogue in Sydney, Ralf Hütter stated: "Now we have finished one to eight, now we can concentrate on number nine." In July, it performed at the 47th Montreux Jazz Festival. The band also played a 3-D concert on 12 July at Scotland's biggest festival –
T in the Park – in Balado, Kinross, as well as 20 July at
Latitude Festival in Suffolk, and 21 July at the Longitude Festival in Dublin. In October 2013 the band played four concerts, over two nights, in
Eindhoven, Netherlands. The venue,
Evoluon (the former technology museum of
Philips Electronics, now a conference center) was handpicked by Ralf Hütter, for its
retro-futuristic UFO-like architecture. Bespoke visuals of the building, with the saucer section descending from space, were displayed during the rendition of
Spacelab. In 2014, Kraftwerk brought its four-night, 3D
Catalogue tour to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and at NYC's
United Palace Theatre. It also played at the Cirkus in Stockholm, Sweden and at the music festival
Summer Sonic in Tokyo, Japan. In November 2014 the 3D
Catalogue live set was played in Paris, France, at the brand new Fondation Louis-Vuitton from 6 to 14 November. and then in the iconic
Paradiso concert hall in
Amsterdam,
Netherlands, where they played before in 1976. In 2015, Ralf Hütter, being told that the
Tour de France would be starting that year in the nearby Dutch city of
Utrecht, decided that Kraftwerk would perform during the "Grand Départ". Eventually the band played three concerts 3 and 4 July in
TivoliVredenburg performing "Tour de France Soundtracks" and visited the start of the Tour in-between. At the request of race director
Christian Prudhomme, Kraftwerk performed at the Tour de France on 1 July 2017, this time in Kraftwerk's hometown
Düsseldorf. French electronic band
Air opened the concert, invited by Kraftwerk. Concertgoers were offered 3D glasses to perceive
stereoscopic effects on the video screen.
3-D The Catalogue and Schneider's death (2017–present) In April 2017, Kraftwerk announced
3-D The Catalogue, a live album and video documenting performances of all eight albums in
The Catalogue that was released 26 May 2017. It is available in multiple formats, the most extensive of which being a 4-disc
Blu-ray set with a 236-page hardback book. The album was nominated for the
Grammy Awards for
Best Dance/Electronic Album and
Best Surround Sound Album at the ceremony that took place on 28 January 2018, winning the former, which became the band's first Grammy win. On 20 July 2018, at a concert in Stuttgart, German astronaut
Alexander Gerst performed "Spacelab" with the band while aboard the
International Space Station, joining via a live video link. Gerst played melodies using a tablet as his instrument alongside Hütter as a duet, and delivered a short message to the audience. On 20 July 2019, Kraftwerk headlined the Saturday night lineup on the
Lovell Stage at
Bluedot Festival, a music and science festival held annually at
Jodrell Bank Observatory, Cheshire, UK. The 2019 festival celebrated the 50th anniversary of the
Apollo 11 Moon landing. On 21 April 2020, Florian Schneider died at age 73 after a brief battle with cancer. On 3 July 2020, the German-language versions of
Trans Europe Express,
The Man Machine,
Computer World,
Techno Pop and
The Mix, alongside
3-D The Catalogue, were released worldwide on streaming services for the first time. On 21 December 2020, Parlophone/WEA released
Remixes, a digital
compilation album. It includes remixed tracks taken from singles released 1991, 1999, 2000, 2004 and 2007, plus the previously unreleased "Non Stop", a version of "
Musique Non-Stop" used as a jingle by
MTV Europe beginning in 1993. The cover re-uses the cover from "
Expo Remix". The compilation was released on CD and vinyl in 2022. On 30 October 2021, Kraftwerk was inducted into the
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In November 2021, the band announced plans for a 2022 North American tour. With the members' live performances celebrating Kraftwerk's fiftieth anniversary, the
Remixes compilation album came out on compact disc and vinyl for the first time in addition. Since 2023, it has begun visualising its music on the façades of castles and other historic buildings in a special way. In May 2024, it performed nine nights at the
Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, presenting one of its eight albums each night and another concert as the ninth gig. On 27 July 2024, at the
Fuji Rock Festival in
Naeba, Kraftwerk played a cover version of another artist's work for the first time: "
Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence" by
Ryuichi Sakamoto, who died in 2023. Hütter had been friends with Sakamoto since 1981. After performing "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence", Kraftwerk played "Radioactivity", for which Sakamoto wrote the Japanese lyrics in 2012. On 4 December 2024, Kraftwerk announced their Multimedia Tour to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of
Autobahn, enlisting professional skateboarder
Tony Hawk in doing so. == Music and artistry ==