Kraftwerk
Orpheum Theater, Phoenix, Arizona - 14 April 2025
"Kraftwerk
have always been ahead of their time"
The last time
I saw Kraftwerk live, I was thoroughly unimpressed. It was July
1991, at Brixton Academy, and my twenty-something self left
disgruntled, “What was the point?,” I muttered. “That
wasn’t a concert.” Three decades later, Kraftwerk haven’t
changed. At least, not in style. The only member remaining from that
line-up is Ralf Hütter, which is why a friend refers to them as the
‘band of Theseus‘. Though given a defining trait is the group’s
entirely deliberate lack of stage presence, few musical ensembles
are better built to cope with personnel changes. But I did warn my
wife beforehand what she should expect, based on my earlier
experience. Kraftwerk will take the stage at 8 pm, on the dot. They
will not interact with the audience in any way. They will play for
two hours in front of their video wall. They will leave.
Turns out this
was almost entirely spot-on, and the same as in 1991. Except, this
time I really enjoyed it.
So if
Kraftwerk haven’t changed, I guess I have. Not least that I now
prefer to sit down at a concert. In this, I was aligned with the
overwhelming majority of attendees here. It was an older audience,
as you’d expect considering Kraftwerk last released new music in
2003. It’s ironic how the band, originally the very definition of a
studio only group, has existed solely in the live arena for the past
two decades. The crowd tonight remained seated throughout, with
occasional fist-pumping, and of course, enthusiastic applause, being
the peak display of energy. There were two younger attendees, who
tried standing, a few rows in front of us. This almost provoked a
riot, until they were relocated by the ushers off our lawn, and over
to the side aisle. #KidsTheseDays
 |
 |
 |
The set-up was
basically the same as 34 years earlier. Four podiums on stage, once
for each identically dressed band member. Now, the suits they wear
have LED piping on them, changing colour throughout the show, and
making them look like extras from Tron. I genuinely couldn’t
tell who was who until the end, when Hütter was the last man off.
He’s on the left in the photos, in case you should care. The major
difference was the brilliance and clarity of the video and graphics.
These were super-sharp, really popping off the screen, and a far cry
from the primitive CG of 1991 – as was apparent when the
polygon-heads from that era made a nostalgic re-appearance during Boing
Boom Tschak.
Then again,
Kraftwerk have always been ahead of their time. They were arguably
the first group to embrace synth-pop fully, and their Computer
World album from 1981 foreshadowed today’s interconnected
world. Oh, yeah: and they created hip-hop. A bold claim? Well, it’s
not an aging Scotsman saying this, but DMC of Run-DMC, in an
interview with the NME. You’d be hard-pushed to find three more
influential consecutive albums on electronic music than Trans-Europe
Express, The Man Machine and Computer World. Yet they
never broke through here in America, to the point that the local
newspaper felt compelled to issue a primer, calling them
“underground”. Not in Britain, where they had seven top-30 singles,
including The Model, the first song by a German act to hit
#1 [beating Eurovision’s Nicole to that title by three months]. But
in the US? Autobahn was their only top-50 hit.
 |
 |
 |
This tour was
nominally to celebrate the golden anniversary of that song, though
much of the set was drawn from the trilogy mentioned above. The
songs tended to be more or less subtly-reworked versions of the
originals, often boosted into surround sound which worked
particularly well on motive tracks like Spacelab. The video
for that, incidentally, ended with Kraftwerk’s UFO flying over the
Phoenix skyline before landing outside the venue, which got loud
cheers from the locals. It may have been cheap heat, as the
wrestling world calls it. But you take whatever acknowledgment from
Kraftwerk of your existence, you can get – even a dry nod to your
location. That was as close as we got to any interaction. I might
have seen a band member tapping his foot at one point. Not sure.
What’s
impressive is how modern much of it sounds. Autobahn could
have come out last week, not closer to the Great Depression than to
the present day, and the next oldest track, Radioactivity is
just as crunchy and chewy as it was at the time. It benefited most
from the reworking, mutating – an appropriate phrase given its topic
– from the slow-paced original into the catchy and danceable version
from 1991’s The Mix. However, the top tier song – and I feel
sure DMC would approve – was the extended version of Trans-Europe
Express, even though the bass-line was reverberating my
intestines to an almost disturbing degree. The soundtrack to my
Inter-Railing round Europe in college during the late eighties, will
likely also be the soundtrack when we do the same thing for our 25th
wedding anniversary in 2027. And there’s none more fitting.
 |
 |
Inevitably, there were omissions. I’d have liked to have heard Pocket Calculator, perhaps their plinkiest of pop items. Showroom Dummies was also missing. But I’ve no complaints, and this morning it was their encore, The Robots, I was humming as I moved robotically around the house, to the moderate concern of our youngest kitten. I look forward to checking out Kraftwerk again – with whatever personnel might comprise them at that stage – in another 30-35 years, and seeing if they still seem as avant-garde and cutting edge as they did last night. 8/10
Setlist: Numbers/Computer World, Home Computer/It’s More Fun to Compute, Spacelab, Airwaves, Tango, The Man-Machine, Electric Café, Autobahn, Computer Love, The Model, Neon Lights, Geiger Counter, Radioactivity, Tour de France, La Forme, Trans-Europe Express, Planet of Visions, Boing Boom Tschak/Techno Pop, Encore: The Robots