Thanks for the article! Being one of those sad people who missed out on a ticket, I thought i'd treat myself a trip to NYC to go see the exhibit at MoMA PS1 this past Saturday.
Man was I disappointed. I assumed incorrectly that there would have been an exhibition of old photos, artworks, memorabilia and whatnot. I quickly learnt that the exhibit was Kraftwerk music vids playing in a big dome. Speakers were sooo distorted that I could only stay in there for a whole of 10 mins. Probably my fault for not researching the exhibit info before booking the 5 hour flight. I really needed a t-shirt that said, "I went to the Kraftwerk exhibit and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt". Carry on... -- Patrick Wacher On Sunday, April 22, 2012 at 11:47 PM, Fred Heutte wrote: > http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/musical/2012/04/30/120430crmu_music_frerejones? > currentPage=all > > Sound Machine > > How did a pop band end up in a museum? > > by Sasha Frere-Jones > > April 30, 2012 > > On an August night in 1981, the German band Kraftwerk played at the > Ritz, on East Eleventh Street in Manhattan, in support of its latest > album, “Computer World.” The only instruments onstage were actually > machines: reel-to-reel tape recorders, synthesizers, keyboards, and a > calculator. All four members of the group had short hair and dressed > identically, in black button-down shirts, black pants, and shiny > shoes, which made them look more like valets than like musicians. That > didn’t bother them, as they didn’t like the idea of being a band—or > even musicians—and often referred to themselves as “operators.” > > For the song “Pocket Calculator,” one member triggered percussion with > a drumstick. Another used a Stylophone, a metal keyboard played with a > small stylus. Florian Schneider, a founding member, played the > calculator, which was wired into the sound system, so that pressing > the keys made audible beeps. His partner, Ralf Hütter, who is the only > remaining original member of Kraftwerk, sang the lyrics of the song in > a monotone—an approach that he calls Sprechgesang, or “spoken > singing”—and played a small Mattel keyboard. “By pressing down a > special key / it plays a little melody,” he intoned. Schneider > responded by playing something sort of like a melody with the > calculator. At one point, Hütter bent down and let the audience play > the keyboard. Recently, Hütter said, “I wanted to show them that > anyone could make electronic music.” > > That year, songs from “Computer World” were played on “urban” radio > stations in New York, such as Kiss-FM and WBLS. The Bronx d.j. and > hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa was in the audience at the Ritz. He > had found Kraftwerk’s 1977 album, “Trans-Europe Express,” in a record > bin several years earlier. “I was just looking at these guys on the > cover and saying, ‘Whoa, whoa, what the hell is this?’ ” he told me. > “Wow! Something’s here that’s very funky, and I got to play it for my > audience.” He added that Kraftwerk’s battery of gear at the Ritz made > it look as if they were playing “washing machines.” (Because of the > difficulty of re-creating their recordings with such complicated > equipment, the band has visited the U.S. only seven times in its > forty-two-year history. Now they use laptops.) The following year, > Bambaataa, along with the musician John Robie and the producer Arthur > Baker, combined the beat of “Numbers,” from “Computer World,” and the > melody of the title track from “Trans-Europe Express” to create > “Planet Rock,” an early hip-hop song that spawned a small clutch of > genres, including electro, Miami bass, and Brazilian baile funk. > “Computer World,” Kraftwerk’s masterpiece, sold less than a million > copies, yet its influence has been surprisingly broad—even Coldplay, > for its single “Talk,” from 2005, has used a melody from the album. > > One song on “Computer World,” called “Home Computer,” has a > distinctive, ascending arpeggio that feels a bit like bubbles rising > quickly through mercury. That arpeggio shows up in LCD Soundsystem’s > single “Disco Infiltrator,” from 2005. It’s also referenced in Missy > Elliott’s “Lose Control,” from the same year. A few days ago, I was > walking through SoHo and passed the Uniqlo store, with its painfully > fluorescent lighting, which illuminates only slightly less fluorescent > clothing. Nicki Minaj’s hit “Starships,” a savvy combination of > dubstep and traditional house, was bleeding onto the street. When I > listened closely, I realized that this version was actually a mashup > with one of the many songs that has used “Home Computer” ’s arpeggio. > Maybe it was Kraftwerk, or LCD Soundsystem, or Missy, or someone else > entirely. It didn’t matter—the sound still signifies newness, joy, and > some kind of ascent. > > It turned out not only that anyone could make electronic music but > that almost everyone wanted to. Kraftwerk is perhaps the only group > that played the Ritz in 1981 that sounds entirely current today. > Plenty of people saw the machines coming, but nobody else has listened > as carefully to them, or documented their strengths as lovingly. > > This month, the Museum of Modern Art opened a retrospective of > Kraftwerk, its first for a musical act. In the six-story atrium, > Kraftwerk played an abbreviated version of its repertoire, in > chronological order of its albums, on eight consecutive nights. The > shows cherry-picked from each, followed by an hour or so of the > group’s best-known songs. “These aren’t concerts,” Klaus Biesenbach, > the chief curator at large for the Museum of Modern Art, who organized > the exhibit with the curatorial assistant Eliza Ryan, explained. “It’s > a retrospective; it’s curated. They aren’t playing everything they > ever recorded, any more than we could fill the museum with every photo > Cindy Sherman has ever taken.” > > Demand for tickets overloaded the Web site of the third-party vender, > ShowClix, minutes after they went on sale. Buyers were limited to two > tickets each, and ticket holders had to show identification to obtain > a wristband required for admission, to prevent scalping. Still, > listings on Craigslist showed up immediately, offering entry in > exchange for more than two thousand dollars and, in one instance, for > an evening with a “hot, swinger couple.” Animatronic robots designed > to look like the band members were on display in the lobby, and > listening stations loaded with the band’s albums were in place near > the atrium. Hütter said that seeing these robots was no better or > worse than seeing the band members themselves. “The robots are members > of Kraftwerk,” he added. > > Four consecutive Sundays have been dedicated to d.j.s playing the > music of Kraftwerk over a surround-sound system set up in a geodesic > dome in the courtyard of MOMA PS1, in Queens. Bambaataa is scheduled > to play the last Sunday, May 13th. The first weekend at PS1, April > 14th and April 15th, showed how wide Kraftwerk’s influence has been. > That Saturday, Juan Atkins, who is often credited as the first > practitioner of Detroit techno, played a set that began with > Kraftwerk, then moved into pop songs that reflected the band’s > influence, like Yaz’s hit “Don’t Go,” from 1982. The next day, Hütter > performed. While the beat from “Numbers” thumped along, and the band’s > album covers were projected onto the walls of the dome, Hütter sang > into a Korg vocoder, which processes speech and combines it with the > notes of the keyboard. “I feel at home in the dome,” he sang. > > How did a pop band end up in a museum? Hütter and Schneider began > collaborating in the late sixties, in Düsseldorf, and in 1970 opened a > studio, a loft that they called Kling Klang, near the railway station. > Düsseldorf was a center for avant-garde art; Kling Klang shared a wall > with Gerhard Richter’s studio, and, for breaks, they would all play > foosball with Joseph Beuys. First calling themselves the Organization, > they later chose Kraftwerk (“power station”), because of its > implications—“energy,” “art work,” “craft”—and also because of the > ubiquity on German highways of signs for power stations. > > In addition, the name and its industrial aesthetic seemed like a > subtle affront to the earthy English hippies who were popular at the > time, bands such as Cream, the Yardbirds, and Led Zeppelin, who > performed versions of American blues, complete with long guitar solos. > The guitarist Michael Rother, who played in an early version of > Kraftwerk and later formed the influential rock band Neu! with the > drummer Klaus Dinger, told me that Hütter was the first musician he > had met who “had the same feeling about melody and harmony that I’d > held inside me that was not based on blues or the structure of > American-British pop music.” Living in postwar Germany, and alert to > the problems of the immediate past and the proximate present, > musicians were trying to establish a German pop language from thin > air. Mimicking Anglo-American musical poses was cheesy, but anything > that sounded overtly Germanic evoked dangerous historical memories. > What the groups of Kraftwerk’s cohort settled on, in common, was > reduction and repetition: no guitar solos. > > Kraftwerk’s early records were not particularly melodic and only > intermittently rhythmic. Pieces were built around keyboard tones, > flute, guitar noises, the sound of breathing, and occasional stretches > of drumming. “Autobahn,” the band’s fourth album, from 1974, was its > first to move decisively toward pop, though not as it was practiced at > the time. Bits of flute and guitar remained, but most of the music was > generated by drum machines and synthesizers, which Hütter and > Schneider had begun to modify themselves. By the time “Radioactivity” > was released, in 1975, the guitar and flute were gone, and the > machines took over for good. While the chorus of “Autobahn”—“Wir > fahr’n fahr’n fahr’n auf der Autobahn”—was a reference to the Beach > Boys and their “fun fun fun,” Kraftwerk rarely sang in harmony, and > almost every vocal was processed through some kind of machine. > > They saw their work as “confronting the mirror of the tape machine” > and representing Alltag—everyday life. Their shows, which often took > place in art galleries, were rarely traditional. Hütter sometimes > rubbed a microphone across his face. “Depending on the length of my > beard, it would make stronger sounds,” he said. At one show, their > collaborator Emil Schult circled a gallery space on roller skates and > beamed wireless signals into the sound system while Hütter and > Schneider played keyboards. At another, the band set up a drum machine > and weighed down the keys of a synthesizer before leaving the stage. > Hütter told the Rolling Stone reporter Mike Rubin that “the audience > at the party was so wild they kept dancing to the machine.” > > But the band’s passion was for recording, and it did so obsessively, > with the gifted engineer Conny Plank. In Dave Tompkins’s “How to Wreck > a Nice Beach,” a history of synthetic voice processing, Schneider > says, “The mysterious thing about these machines, sometimes when you > use them, you feel like a secret agent of sounds. We closed our > studio—nobody could go inside. We were very paranoid.” The work paid > off. As democratic and empowering as drum machines may be, there are > very few pop records that sound as exquisitely balanced as > Kraftwerk’s. > > At the time, electronic music was a curiosity in pop. In 1968, the > composer Wendy Carlos released an interpretation of Bach, played on a > Moog synthesizer, that won three Grammys. Compilations keyed to the > novelty of the Moog appeared in the early seventies, featuring chirpy > versions of songs such as “Yummy Yummy Yummy” and “Popcorn.” There was > already substantial academic and commercial work being done on > synthesizers in places like Stanford University’s computer department, > the BBC Radiophonics Workshop, and the West German Broadcasting > studio, in Cologne. Tangerine Dream, from Berlin, Kraftwerk’s > contemporary, was making entire albums using synthesizers, though it > fit more comfortably into what would one day be called “ambient > music,” rather than pop. > > Early reactions to Kraftwerk were often hostile, and sometimes verged > on xenophobic. In an interview published in Creem, in 1975, the critic > Lester Bangs asked the members of Kraftwerk if their machines were > “the final solution” for pop music. “No, not the solution. The next > step,” Hütter responded, and he was right. Pop’s non-narrative > phrases, glittering, brief melodies, and reliance on technology can be > traced directly to Kraftwerk’s concept of Mensch-Maschine, or “man- > machine,” which was not just the name of the band’s seventh album but > also a guiding principle. The sound is rooted in the interaction > between computers and people—which, for many of us, is what now fills > our waking hours. Kraftwerk’s melding of machines and everyday life is > far from eugenic, though; it’s remarkably gentle, even a bit > melancholy. The bicycles and cars and computers and radios and > calculators that inhabit their albums are a friendly lot. When Bangs > tried to provoke the band by citing William Burroughs’s assertion that > one could start a riot with two tape recorders, Schneider responded, > “A person doing experimental music must be responsible for the results > of the experiments. They could be very dangerous emotionally.” > > After “Autobahn,” Kraftwerk’s music became increasingly syncopated and > propulsive, and, without intending to, the band began laying the > foundation for electronic dance music. Hütter’s explanation is simple: > “Machines are very funky.” With remarkable consistency, each album > referred to a mechanical process that the music mimicked, a simple > concept that reflected a culture increasingly defined by the machines > around it. “Radioactivity” echoed Geiger counters; “Trans-Europe > Express” imitated the rhythm of wheels on train tracks and the > descending tone of the Doppler effect; and “Computer World” was made > by computers and about computers. The albums embodied both the > simplicity and the richness of electronic signals. > > Last year, MOMA presented an Andy Warhol exhibition, which felt like a > natural precursor to the Kraftwerk shows. The band is the Warhol of > pop—apolitical, fond of mechanical reproduction, and almost creepily > prescient. While Warhol, with his silk screens and lithographs, was > criticized for ignoring the idea that an art work is a unique object, > traditionalists decried the anonymity of Kraftwerk’s machines, and > implied that using synthesizers was somehow cheating. But, for both > artists, it was not limiting that anybody could paint a soup can that > someone else had designed, or that anybody could push a button on a > keyboard that someone else had made. One could modify the image of > mass-produced objects as needed, and both Warhol and Kraftwerk did, > repeatedly. Making copies of things made them democratically available > but didn’t preclude the individuality of the modifiers. > > The exhibition at MOMA was Kraftwerk’s first appearance in New York > since 2005, when the group played a volcanic show at the Hammerstein > Ballroom. (Schneider was still with the group; he left the band in > 2006. Hütter says that Schneider was tired of touring.) Whereas the > Hammerstein show was ecstatic, a loud moment of catharsis for the > dance audience that remains the band’s core demographic, the MOMA > shows were controlled presentations for a diverse crowd that seemed > only to want to lay eyes on these legends. As Kraftwerk, in various > forms, has done for decades, four band members stood in a line behind > podiums that neatly hid what they were manipulating. Hütter stood > stage right and worked with a keyboard, playing most of the lead > melodies live. At other times, he said, “I read e-mails. I have an > iPad. I have a text prompter for the lyrics.” > > Henning Schmitz and Fritz Hilpert, later additions to the band, stood > between Stefan Pfaffe and Hütter, working on synchronized laptops, > while also triggering rhythmic elements. Pfaffe controlled the > visuals. Since it was a retrospective, the shows were not allowed to > vary substantially—“you can’t change a painting for a retrospective,” > Biesenbach said—so each one began with a deep vocoder voice speaking > in German and English, introducing the “ladies and gentlemen” to the > Mensch-Maschine. After a brief spray of notes, a white scrim fell, > revealing the band members, each wearing a skintight bicycling outfit > covered with luminescent white lines in a grid formation, as if they > were being tracked on a green screen for later animation. Hütter is > fit—he takes bicycling trips through Europe—but he has a small paunch, > which slightly deformed the grid. > > For several nights, the band opened with a song called “The Robots.” > Hütter recited in Sprechgesang, “We’re charging our own battery, and > now we’re full of energy.” Behind the musicians, on a screen, robots > sported red shirts and black ties, as they had on the cover of “The > Man-Machine.” The crowd, which included musical adventurers such as > Yoko Ono and Michael Stipe, had been given 3-D glasses. In 3-D, the > robots turned and dipped their heads, and their enormous arms seemed > to float over the band members. The visuals for many songs were simply > the lyrics rendered in a kind of ticker-tape typeface, crawling across > the screen as lines undulated in the virtual background. “Autobahn” > opened with the sound of an engine turning over and introduced a > visual rendering of the Autobahn running through the Rhineland. (The > band’s appearance at MOMA was sponsored by Volkswagen.) > > This kind of frozen kitsch ran through the shows. As crisp as the > music sounded, the visuals occasionally felt like visions of the > future from the late seventies, or early digital art you might find in > an e-card from your mom. There were moments of 3-D treble clefs > zooming toward the audience, as if Kraftwerk were paying tribute both > to clip art and to themselves. The band members jiggled their legs but > were otherwise immobile, and perhaps three smiles broke out onstage in > the course of the week. The audience mirrored the band’s reserve; even > during the most propulsive numbers, people seemed to remember that > they were in a museum. > > What carried the retrospective, and kept it from being a period piece, > was the sound. It was relatively quiet, as pop-music performance goes, > and Hütter explained that it was like classical music for him; hearing > detail was important, and there needed to be room for dynamic surges > and drops. Hearing the rippling, atonal arpeggios of “Numbers” or the > almost demure tootling of “Neon Lights” made it seem as if Kraftwerk’s > influence on contemporary music might never end. Every fragment of > language—“It’s in the air for you and me,” for instance—and every > lullaby melody could be dropped, without change, into any modern pop > song and sound appropriate to even the savviest listener. Hütter says > that the band is working on a new album, though that seems entirely > unnecessary at this point. Their old is still our new.
