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Mean Maschine

Bit of a flashback here!

Mean Maschine - [Sunday Herald]

Live Electronica: Kraftwerk - Carling Academy, Glasgow
Reviewed by Leon McDermott

A disconnected voice says: “Ladies and gentlemen, die mensch maschine, Kraftwerk.” And so it begins: a history of dance music, condensed into two hours. The music that has sprung forth from Kraftwerk’s D�sseldorf studio, KlingKlang, has prefigured so much of dance music that without them, the world would sound a whole lot different. Techno, house, electro, hip hop and ambient all owe Kraftwerk a debt that’s still being worked off. It’s all here: the cold, dispassionate synths that are the thread between Fritz Lang’s streamlined vision of the future and the outer reaches of techno; the clanking, juddering beats that provided the building blocks for electro; and bass that is at times as subterranean and as sinister as anything the likes of Dizzee Rascal has produced.

They open with the rising cadences of The Man-Machine, in front of a crowd � everyone from ponytailed pensioners to wide-eyed kids � which receives the quartet as enthusiastically as any kiddie pop show; afterwards, people wax lyrical about having seen them in Edinburgh in 1991, the last time they played Scotland. Not that their music � or the band themselves for that matter, wearing matching black suits and ties, their mostly hidden red shirts adding a touch of colour � seems to have aged: 1983�s Tour De France still resonates with the bicycle-loving optimism that brought it into being, while the repetitive, cyclical chords of Autobahn (a song now in its fourth decade, and which introduces itself with a cavalcade of revving engines and cheeky car horns) still sound like they were made for some future where roads remain things to be cherished and worshipped, rather than the mundane, gridlocked things they actually are. Kraftwerk, one might assume, still think this should be the case; no worries for them about global warming and the exploitation of the world�s oil supplies needed to keep the wheels turning.

However, as much as Kraftwerk�s music is that of the shiny new electronic future, there�s a dark, brooding side to their take on the world. As vintage footage of models on the catwalk plays behind the band, the emotionally dislocated narrative of The Model, in which everything � work, socialising, sex � is reduced to a financial transaction, plays out over sighing, resigned synths. There�s emotion here, but presented in as detached a way as possible.

Instead, Kraftwerk reserve what love they have to give for machines. Trans-Europe Express, their 1978 ode to intercontinental railways � subsequently sampled by Afrika Bambaataa for b-boy classic Planet Rock � practically seethes with love for the possibilities of travel; Pocket Calculator (in this incarnation, substantially beefed up with thumping, floor-shaking beats) is reworked as a slab of pulsating techno, occasionally interrupted by choppy bursts of percussion and synths. For The Robots, the band are replaced on stage by their famous robotic dolls. You wonder, as their arms wave almost in time to the juddering bassline, if Kraftwerk themselves are actually backstage sipping on cups of tea as the crowd applaud four lifeless dummies. It�s Thunderbirds as techno gods, and a wry joke at the expense of those people who assumed that they�re a band with no sense of humour, a band who could never be truly loved.

Another break, and the band return, this time in splendidly over-the-top neon-checked lycra; the flesh that covers the robotic frames that have just left the stage.

That a thunderous cheer greets the arrival of their mannequins speaks volumes; the audience loves them as much as it loves the band. It�s Kraftwerk�s best joke: because for all that they worship technology, they don�t worship it half as much as their fans.

21 March 2004

March 21, 2004 at 12:15 AM in World Affairs | Permalink | TrackBack (4) | Top of page | Blog Home