Comment: Kraftwerk helped shape the sound of modern music Published on: 11 May 2020 Writing for The Conversation, Dr Adam Behr discusses the legacy of Florian Schneider, co-founder of Kraftwerk. Florian Schneider and Ralf HĆ¼tter: pioneering use of synthesizers in pop music. Kraft74 via Shutterstock , There are few bands whose influence was such that it can unequivocally be said that modern music would sound different without them. Kraftwerk, co-founded by , whose recent death at the age of 73 was announced on May 6, was one such act. The band left an indelible imprint on the sound of popular music by bringing synthesised instruments to the forefront and electronics into the mainstream. Schneider trained as a flautist , which might seem an odd background for a musician whose work did so much to shape the synth-pop and electronic dance music of the 1980s and beyond. But he and band-mate Ralf HĆ¼tter ā an alumnus of the same music school ā exemplified an exploratory approach to music making that traverses musical fields. Emerging initially from an experimental milieu, their early albums were free-form improvisations that mixed electronic and traditional instruments. Alongside other German electronic acts, including Can and Neu!, they came to represent āā (as English critics dubbed it) or āKosmische Musikā (ācosmic musicā, a term used by the German muscians). The big breakthrough for Kraftwerk (the name means āpower plantā) came with the release in 1974 of their fourth album Autobahn. The was a sonic depiction of the modernity of long-distance highway travel in their native Germany. Imbued with the sound effects of cars and horns, you could find distant echoes in the lyrics of the driving songs of Beach Boys and Chuck Berry. The album was a Top 10 hit, in Germany, the US and the UK, with a radio edit of the title track ā 21 minutes long on the album ā confounding expectations by in the UK, US, Australia and the Netherlands. Although some acoustic instruments could still be heard, Autobahn saw the bandās line-up stabilise around Schneider, Rutter and percussionists and . Its sound crystallised into something precise, evocative, human and yet simultaneously uncanny, laid over rhythmic grooves created with customised electronic instruments. Influencing the influencers While subsequent albums, including Radioactivity, Trans-Europe Express and The Man Machine, performed respectably ā if not earth-shatteringly ā in the commercial realm, Kraftwerkās true impact was not so much about blazing a trail through the charts as expanding the parameters of popular music and opening up the ears of a generation of innovators to new possibilities. David Bowieās late 1970s albums recorded in Berlin were , and he name-checked its co-founder on from Heroes. Electronically synthesized instruments werenāt new, but had often been regarded as the preserve of experimenters on the commercial fringe, of the soundtrack artists in the more rarefied environs of the , or as a kind of novelty. Their presence in rock music was tolerated, but rarely celebrated or centralised until Kraftwerk. Iām the operator: Florian Schneider in Ferrara, Italy in 2005. Daniele Dalledonne via Wikimedia Commons, Schneider and RĆ¼tter paved the way for pop that used electronics as a foundation, rather than a garnish, and cleared the way for the likes of Gary Numan, Depeche Mode and the Human League in the 1980s. But their shadow was cast much wider than the straight line of synth-driven pop. The exactitude of their tracks, and sonic distinctiveness, made them ideal fodder for the sampling that was emerging as a recording practice. Their songs Numbers and Trans-Europe Express served as the lynchpin of Afrika Bambaataās at the roots oft the roots of hip-hop. Likewise, techno pioneer Derrick May about their extensive influence on the formation of the genre. with the originators of techno in Detroit: āThey were doing this thing that was from another planet ā¦ everybody latched onto Kraftwerk.ā Enriching popās sonic vocabulary Key to their impact, and their work, was that they operated at a tangent to the pop world, as they had with the world of classical music. Their robotic stage act allowed them to eschew the celebrity game and the band, Schneider in particular, tended to be reticent about giving interviews in later years. Running their own studio: Kling Klang ā their āelectronic gardenā as they called it ā along with control of their business affairs allowed them to exercise aesthetic autonomy. : We have invested in our machines, we have enough money to live, thatās it. We can do what we want, we are independent, we donāt do cola adverts, even if we might have been flattered by such proposals, we never accepted. Their emphasis was on constructing sounds, first and foremost, with an omnivorous approach to source materials and subject matter. āWe make compositions from everything,ā . āAll is permitted, there is no working principle, there is no system.ā Mass appeal, it turned out, was a byproduct. Thereās a degree of irony in a band so tangentially concerned with pop so definitively reshaping it. Their singular approach has yet to be replicated, even as its echoes resound across pop, rock and dance music. What makes them distinctive is that they didnāt just stand at a crossroads between different generic approaches, but uncovered those pathways, growing popular musicās sonic vocabulary and revealing its boundless capacity for incorporating new ideas. , Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the . 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