Man.Machine.Nature.Technology.Time.Travel.Communication.
Entertainment. Elektro. Pop. Musik. Non Stop.

Not many bands last forty years. The Beatles didn't even last a quarter of that time. Most of that reach that ate exist on a nostalgia show, playing the same songs, the same old way, brinign nothing to the table new but a rehash of their greatest hits. All the hits, just how you expect them, for a whoppingly big paycheck. Even fewer manage to continue to be relevant, up to date, cutting edge - yet utterly familiar. Frozen in time yet utterly modern. It must have been that they were so damn futuristic in the first place. 

Kraftwerk - four faceless Germans in cycling outfits, playing behind a video installation - are the techno Beach Boys. A fusing of Man and Machine, Musical workers but resolutely cold, technology with a human face. I even heard a rumour than one of them smiled once, but I can't actually be sure.So when one of them actually tells a joke, betraying such human emotion, its oddly reassuring yet bizarrely out of place.And That point happens just after a mammoth "Tour De France". 

"Next time We will bring our bicycles", jokes the cycling obsessed Ralf Hutter. Thats as unKraftwerkian as you can ever get here. The choice of the velodrome is no coincidence. The bands only new material in the last 23 years was a concept album about cycling, entitled Tour De France Soundtracks.As venues go its cold, sterile, metallic, technologic and therefore utterly perfect. Surrounded on all sides by a purpose built, National Cycling Centre designed for competition racing, its an unconventional home for the fathers of Techno, the people who invented tne years before anyone else caught on the only new genre of music in the last twenty years. The Electronic Punk. By 1988, when the Sun was going crazy about this new acid house craze, Kraftwerk had been making it for a decade.

Part Art Installation, part a living tribute to themselves, part the most perfect pop band that ever existed, Tour De France sees this taken to the most logical extreme. A concept album about cycling, played in the National Cycling Centre entitled the Velodrome.. this more than just a gig. its a fusion of concept and reality. And most unexpectedly, during "Tour De France", the cycling track itself comes to life. There is motion. A blur of colour, and machinery. Man. Machine. Gears. Just as the graphics on stage depict Team KW, a four man group circle around the track in precision. I've never seen sport as a art installation before. Some bands may have dancers on stage - Kraftwerk have a cycling team. Team GB performs in perfect synchronicity, Four cyclists in fusion and harmony with their machines. In unison. Its the strangest fusion of music and sport you've ever seen. Forget Three Lions, imagine what it would be like to see The England team doing a dance routine to that. With footballs. Its that sort of perfect harmony. And utterly unexpected.

 We've come to see Kraftwerk, but for a few minutes, its team GB that hold the spotlight. Its an unforgettable and unqiue moment, the likes of which will probably never be repeated. Its utterly fitting, yet utterly unexpected to the gasps of the crowd. its the gig moment of the year.

Singer Ralf Hutter informs us mid song, that naturally, their trainer is German.

With no new material, Kraftwerk do exactly what they always do - be Kraftwerk. Old songs are remodelled into new shapes, new ideas, new sounds. Restrucutred and reconstronstructed from the ground up, eight bars at a time. The five years since their last UK visit sees a few songs dropped from their performance, a few old songs brought back into existence, a few songs taken back into their component bars and rebuilt. 30 years old, yet utterly fresh and modern."Expo 2000" now sequences into "Planet Of Visions", built around a remix by Underground Resistance and a lolloping bassline."Computer Love" steals itself back from "Talk" by Coldplay - something you know, yet didn't know where it came from. "The Model" is perfection. "Showroom Dummies" - the tale of mannequins come to life - is an oddly amusing, yet funky retread of a song you've not heard in a while. The Bass is low, ominious and rumbling. The visuals are in perfect synchronity the fusion of man and technology, of sound and vision, of then and now. The beats are fresh, but the vision on screen is somehow retro - oil paintings from the 30's as "Autobahn" plays, from a time when the future promised not climate change, but a fresh and exciting world of tomorrow. "Trans Europe Express" harks back to an era long gone, closing the set - and yet, these four germans made the funkiest house records ever, when Afrika Bambatta stole this track for their own genre defining "Planet Rock".  The encore is a different kettle of fish, mind you. Its effectively a second gig of the night.

Kraftwerk 3D, complete with 3D vision. Utilising the same polarization technology as last years  "U23D" concert film, and dressed in reflective wireframe jumpsuits, the visuals pop out of the screen into the crowd. Numbers race behind you, as the Quadrophonic sound enevlopes the auditorium. "Numbers" - segueing into "Computer World" and back again - a funky, harsh, experimental beat merging into sleek, clean, machine driven lines. "Radioactivity", prefaced by "Sellafield 2", is shaky but sleek. "Aerodynamik", [another song about cycling] is rejigged from its album version into a new form. And then its "Musik Non Stop", which sees the band leave the stage one by one to huge applause, a synconicity of man, nature, and technology.

Its not a perfect presentation, but its close. The Performance begins on stage long before people expect - at the door, we are handed 3D Glasses with the time "09:30" printed on them, so when the band go on stage at half eight the hall is half empty. For a band so focused on communication, there's poor communication here. People are outside and with reasonable cause, having been informed for a half nine start. Its an awkward and avoidable beginning, but the level of the performance here soon outweighs that.

Deservedly Legends, Kraftwerk do exactly what they always do - to perfection. Someday soon, maybe Kraftwerk themselves will no longer exist, but become a succession of musical workers in charge of the sleekest, most dynamic musical man machine ever. With only one original remaining member from the group that existed in their most productive years of 1973 in Ralf Hutter - who is in his sixties - they won't last forever as is.

But the concept, the idea, the form will continue long after the original membership has been upgraded. Maybe one day soon the band itself will become subservient to itself, with the concept of the sounds and technology, the beat and rhythms taking control. The identity of the musical workers will itself be secondary to the power of the concept, of the art, of the beats. Who controls the machinery itself may change - but whoever it is that will keep the band continuing better love cycling. Seriously. It wouldn't be Kraftwerk without it.

 Setlist:-

Heute Abend - The Man Machine - Planet Of Visions [Expo 2000] - Home Computer - Tour De France - Tour De France Etapes - Autobahn - Computer Love - The Model - Neon Lights - Showroom Dummies - Trans Europe Express - The Robots - Numbers - Computer World - Radioactivity - Vitamin - Aero Dynamik - Musik Non Stop

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