Kraftwerk (album)

Kraftwerk
Studio album by
Kraftwerk
ReleasedNovember 1970
RecordedJuly–September 1970
Genre
Length39:39
LabelPhilips
Producer
Kraftwerk chronology
Kraftwerk
(1970) 		Kraftwerk 2
(1972)

Kraftwerk is the debut studio album by German electronic band Kraftwerk, released in Germany by Philips in November 1970. It was produced by Konrad "Conny" Plank, and features drummers Andreas Hohmann and Klaus Dinger. Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, following their departure from the band Organisation, formed Kraftwerk and recorded the debut album in their own Düsseldorf studio. The debut, compared to their previous work, showcases a disciplined structure and a motorik-groove development. Since the Autobahn tour of 1975, Kraftwerk did not perform any of the material from this album, and it has never been officially reissued.

Background and recording

After the commercial failure of their previous record, Tone Float (1970), Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider of Organisation were dropped by RCA Records and signed a new deal with Philips, the third band that joined its roster. To begin work, the duo rented an empty workshop in an industrial part of Düsseldorf near a railway station, which would eventually become Kling Klang Studio. They arranged it with audio insulation and recorded the rough masters on stereo tape machines and cassette recorders to bring them to a well-equipped studio for mixing. Hütter and Schneider named the new project Kraftwerk, inspired by the industrial environment of Düsseldorf and embracement of their German roots. Moreover, they deliberately titled all of the songs exclusively in German.[1][2]

The album was recorded from July to September 1970[3] and was produced by colleague Conny Plank, who shared the credit with Hütter and Schneider.[1] According to Simon Witter of Mojo, the recording location was the centre of an oil refinery.[4] During the recording of the album, they were also joined by two drummers, Andreas Hohmann and Klaus Dinger,[5] with Hohmann playing on "Ruckzuck"[5][1] and "Stratovarius",[1] while Dinger played on "Vom Himmel Hoch".[6] The other instrumentation features Hütter on guitar, as well as both Hammond and Tubon electric organs, the latter made by Swedish factory Joh Mustad AB in 1966,[7][8] while Schneider plays the flute.[7]

Composition

Ned Raggett, writing for AllMusic, describes Kraftwerk as an art rock album with psych roots and "sudden jump cuts of musique concrète noise and circular jamming as prone to sprawl as it is to tight focus".[9] Adam Blyweiss saw the traces of "credible jazz, rock noise and funk jiggle",[10] while David Stubbs wrote that the record "oscillates between passages of percussive fury and rhythmless, amorphous experimentalism", and represents a crucial step in Kraftwerk's musical evolution.[11] The album is based around, repeated note sequences pre-recorded and mixed on tape, and diversified by "organ tone clusters" and flute feedback sounds. Kraftwerk decided to use acoustic drums, amplified by the use of contact microphones, the choice which wasn't readily accepted by the drummers.[12]

The song "Ruckzuck" is driven by a motorik groove[1] and powerful multi-dubbed flute riff.[13] Hütter plays a piano line on a modified Hammond organ, and many instruments on the album were manipulated by a pitch-to-voltage converter, which converts sound into voltage that powers a synthesizer.[14] NME characterizes "Ruckzuck" as "skirting around the edges of free jazz".[15] According to Stubbs, Schneider's flute playing on the track is comparable to the "breathy fury" of Roland Kirk, within the "linear restraint" of the looped and varispeededed drum cycle.[11]

"Stratovarius" begins with an "ominous cloud of electronic noise" that evolves into an acid rock improvisation,[1] similarly powered by the motorik groove.[15] Stubbs highlights the track's "desultory musique concrète clatter" and conference between a guitar-like violin and heavy percussion.[11] "Megaherz" is a more subdued track, bringing hints of ambient music, and the only one to feature no drums.[1][16] Pascal Bussy discerns a "cathedral-like quality" in "Megaherz".[17] Anderson describes "Vom Himmel Hoch" as a "doomy soundscape", simulating a bombing raid and ending in an apocalyptic explosion.[1] The track has slight pitch curves that emulate the Doppler effect.[8]

Release

Inner sleeve

Kraftwerk was released in November 1970.[18] The album cover features a drawing of a fluorescent-coloured traffic cone,[6] inspired by the works of Andy Warhol and the pop art movement in general.[1] Record Collector's David Hemingway describes the sleeve as "iconic" and minimalistic.[19] The inner sleeve of the first printing contained a photo of an electric generator, which, according to Bussy, complements the industrial theme of the band.[12]

In early 1971, Hütter briefly split from the band to study architecture in Aachen,[20] leaving Schneider, drummer Dinger and newcomer guitarist Michael Rother.[21] The three-member Kraftwerk lineup of Schneider, Dinger and Rother made an appearance on Radio Bremen,[22][23] and on the TV shows Beat-Club and Okidoki,[24] the former of which featured an improvisation titled "Truckstop Gondolero".[23] Shortly thereafter, Dinger and Rother left to form the band Neu!, with Hütter re-joining Schneider to continue Kraftwerk.[20]

The song "Ruckzuck" often served as an opener for Kraftwerk's early concerts.[17] Since the Autobahn tour of 1975, Kraftwerk did not perform any of the material from this album.[14] In later interviews, Schneider referred to the first three Kraftwerk albums as "archaeology", and while they have never been reissued, unauthorized releases have been widely available.[1] In 2007, Kraftwerk hinted that the album might finally see a remastered CD release following the Der Katalog box-set release.[25] Vinyl releases of the first two albums were scheduled for Record Store Day 2020 but were ultimately cancelled.[20]

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[9]
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music[26]
The Great Rock Discography4/10[27]
Spin Alternative Record Guide7/10[28]
Sputnikmusic[16]
Treblezine6/10[10]

"Praise Jimmy", reviewing Kraftwerk for the Sputnikmusic magazine, favorably compared it to the band's classic works, describing it as "remarkably human", "eager", and "organic"; largely contrasting with the "cold, robotic steel" of their classics. Jimmy also highlighted the album's slow and positively primitive approach that denies instant gratification in favor of patience, elaborating that there are "a lot of instances in which it seems like the band are noodling around, but it doesn't exactly mean they're lost" and have "eagerness" equal to "nothing short of charming to say the least".[16] Adam Blyweiss of Treblezine appraised it as a "totally different kind of acquired taste than their later techno, but a fascinating listen nonetheless".[10]

In a mixed review, Ned Raggett of AllMusic felt the absence of Kraftwerk's trademark clipped keyboard melodies, but appreciated the "brilliant co-production and engineering skills" demonstrated by Conny Plank, assessing his input to be as important as the band performances. He positively singled out Hütter's organ work on the "extended opening drone moan of "Stratovarius" joined by Schneider's "eerie violin work".[9] In Record Collector, Hemingway describes its sound as being "as far away as it was possible to get" from Kraftwerk's Vertigo labelmates like Black Sabbath and Manfred Mann's Earth Band, citing the music's "musique concrete, organ tone clusters, and flute feedback." He added that, despite its relatively "inelegant" sound, the record hints at Kraftwerk's later music, evident not only with the "understated melodies and electronic experimentation" of pieces like "Megaherz" and "Vom Himmel Hoch" but also Schneider's early attempts at home-made rhythm instruments presaging those the band later employed.[19]

Biba Kopf of The Wire reflected that Kraftwerk "made the first significant steps towards a new form of amplified music, substantially different from its US/UK counterparts yet just as explosive, by reducing rock to its core elements — the basest beats, raw electric monotones, deliberately monotonous stop-start and fast-slow rhythms."[29] In The Ambient Century (2000), Mark Prendergast refers to Kraftwerk as "pure sound manipulation, a product of [Kraftwerk's] LSD experience of the late 1960s, a nerve-racking ride through machine sounds which ended with a veritable recreation of aerial bombing."[30]

Legacy

"Ruckzuck" was used as the theme song for the PBS show Newton's Apple in the United States.[31] However, its use was unauthorized, and the program later substituted it with a cover version.[14] The track also became a hit in Germany after it featured as the theme tune to the magazine television show Kennzeichen D, and was one of two German underground rock songs of the era to become a hit through TV usage, alongside Can's "Spoon".[29]

In 2019, Stereogum ranked the 1971 Radio Bremen version of "Ruckzuck" among twenty essential Krautrock tracks, highlighting Schneider's "ascent-descent flute intro" as "iconic" and resembling blueprints for the begging of their future track "Trans-Europe Express".[32] In 2020, The Guardian ranked thirty "greatest songs" recorded by Kraftwerk, placing "Ruckzuck" at the tenth spot and describing its "driving repetitive rhythms" as "almost proto-techno".[33] The same year, NME ranked Kraftwerk's debut album at the second-to-last place in the band's discography, ahead of Electric Café (1986), elaborating that the album isn't "tearing up any trees in the 31st century electronica stakes, but it's still a fascinating record".[15]

Track listing

All tracks are written by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider-Esleben.

Side one
No.TitleLength
1."Ruckzuck"7:47
2."Stratovarius"12:10
Side two
No.TitleLength
1."Megaherz"9:30
2."Vom Himmel Hoch"10:12
Total length:39:39

Personnel

Credited adapted from LP liner notes,[34] except where otherwise noted.

Kraftwerk

Technical

  • Conrad Plank – producer, engineer
  • Klaus Löhmer – assistant
  • Ralf Hütter – cover
  • Bernhard Becher – photography
  • Hilla Becher – photography

Charts

Weekly charts

Chart (1971) Peak
position
German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)[35] 30

Year-end charts

Chart (1971) Position
German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)[36] 27

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Anderson, Jason (April 2023). "The Ultimate Music Guide - Kraftwerk". Uncut. pp. 8–11.
  2. ^ Bussy 1993, pp. 27–30.
  3. ^ Koch, Albert (2005). Kraftwerk (in German). Hannibal. p. 58. ISBN 978-3-85445-213-3.
  4. ^ Witter, Simon (12 September 2005). "Kraftwerk: Paranoid Android". Mojo. Retrieved 12 August 2025.
  5. ^ a b c Stubbs, David (5 August 2014). Future Days: Krautrock and the Building of Modern Germany. Faber & Faber. p. 130. ISBN 978-0-571-28334-7. Retrieved 21 October 2022.
  6. ^ a b c Esch 2016, p. 22.
  7. ^ a b Albiez, Sean; Pattie, David (1 January 2011). Kraftwerk: Music Non-Stop. A&C Black. p. 98. ISBN 978-1-4411-9136-6. Retrieved 21 October 2022.
  8. ^ a b Smolko, Tim; Smolko, Joanna (11 May 2021). Atomic Tunes: The Cold War in American and British Popular Music. Indiana University Press. p. 148. ISBN 978-0-253-05618-4. Retrieved 21 October 2022.
  9. ^ a b c Ragget, Ned. Kraftwerk at AllMusic. Retrieved 20 October 2022.
  10. ^ a b c Adam Blyweiss (2 March 2017). "Celebrate the Catalog : Kraftwerk". Treblezine. Archived from the original on 18 May 2024.
  11. ^ a b c Stubbs, David (5 August 2014). Future Days: Krautrock and the Building of Modern Germany. Faber & Faber. pp. 161–162. ISBN 978-0-571-28334-7. Retrieved 21 October 2022.
  12. ^ a b Bussy 1993, p. 31.
  13. ^ Adelt, Ulrich (30 August 2016). Krautrock: German Music in the Seventies. University of Michigan Press. p. 25. ISBN 978-0-472-05319-3. Retrieved 21 October 2022.
  14. ^ a b c Lamb, Benjamin (14 June 2023). "Retrospective: 53 years of Kraftwerk's Kraftwerk". Mixdown. Archived from the original on 18 February 2025. Retrieved 6 March 2025.
  15. ^ a b c Matthew Horton (6 May 2020). "Kraftwerk: Every album ranked in order of greatness". NME. Archived from the original on 26 December 2020. Retrieved 25 March 2025.
  16. ^ a b c Praise Jimmy (3 January 2017). "Kraftwerk – Kraftwerk (emeritus review)". Sputnikmusic.
  17. ^ a b Bussy 1993, p. 32.
  18. ^ Schütte, Uwe (27 February 2020). Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany. Penguin UK. p. 29. ISBN 978-0-241-32055-6. Retrieved 21 October 2022.
  19. ^ a b Hemingway, David (23 October 2007). "Tour de Force". Record Collector. Retrieved 12 August 2025.
  20. ^ a b c Williamson, Nigel (April 2023). "The Ultimate Music Guide - Kraftwerk". Uncut. p. 18.
  21. ^ Thompson, Dave (1 August 2021). I Feel Love: Donna Summer, Giorgio Moroder, and How They Reinvented Music. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 41. ISBN 978-1-4930-4981-3. Retrieved 21 October 2022.
  22. ^ Esch 2016, p. 29.
  23. ^ a b Bussy 1993, p. 34.
  24. ^ Esch 2016, p. 32.
  25. ^ Witter, Simon (2006). "Dummy Magazine - Ralf Hütter - Spring 2006". Dummy. Archived from the original on 12 February 2007. Retrieved 13 August 2023.
  26. ^ Colin Larkin, ed. (1997). "Kraftwerk". The Virgin Encyclopedia of Popular Music (Concise ed.). Virgin Books. p. 724. ISBN 1-85227-745-9.
  27. ^ Strong, Martin C. (2006). "Kraftwerk". The Great Rock Discography. Edinburgh: Canongate Books. p. 616. ISBN 1-84195-827-1.
  28. ^ Weisbard, Eric; Marks, Craig, eds. (1995). "Kraftwerk". Spin Alternative Record Guide. New York: Vintage Books. pp. 215–216. ISBN 0-679-75574-8.
  29. ^ a b Kopf, Biba (July 2001). "Neu! On the Road". The Wire. Retrieved 12 August 2025.
  30. ^ Prendergast, Mark J. (2000). The Ambient Century: From Mahler to Moby – The Evolution of Sound in the Electronic Age. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 298. ISBN 978-1-58234-134-7.
  31. ^ Keeley, Matt (6 May 2020). "R.I.P. Florian Schneider: 5 Best Kraftwerk Songs to Honor the Co-Founder of the Influential Electronic Group". Newsweek. Retrieved 5 March 2025.
  32. ^ Nate Patrin (13 November 2019). "20 Essential Krautrock Songs". Stereogum. Archived from the original on 19 December 2021.
  33. ^ Dave Simpson (7 May 2020). "Kraftwerk: their 30 greatest songs, ranked!". The Guardian.
  34. ^ Kraftwerk (1972). Kraftwerk (LP liner notes). Germany: Philips Records. 6305 058.
  35. ^ "Offiziellecharts.de – Kraftwerk – Kraftwerk" (in German). GfK Entertainment Charts.
  36. ^ "Top 100 Album-Jahrescharts" (in German). GfK Entertainment Charts. 1971. Archived from the original on 2 April 2022. Retrieved 2 April 2022.

Bibliography

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