Like the Grateful Dead, its offshoot Dead & Company and its further-out ancillary jam-byproduct Phish, Kraftwerk has forever had a varied-ages, multi-racial following that floats from tour to tour and show to show. They take in the varied, differing clicks, whirrs and wheezes that exist, organically, within the framework of Düsseldorf’s all-electronic music-making avatars.
Let’s call them K-Holes.
And, lest you think that there is no ghost in the machine of Kraftwerk beyond that of late co-founder Florian Schneider—and that its audience doesn’t hang on every gasp—pay attention hard enough and you’ll hear v2’s brother-in-diodes Ralf Hütter leaning into his keyboard/laptop/sequencer pad with a freshly noodled keystroke, an off-kilter thrum or an all-too-human halt in his robotic vocals.
The point is that this Kraftwerk managed to sound just a little bit different from, say, its 3D Tour of several years back. And the tour before that. And the tour before that. The subtleties are why the diehards return time after time. Unlike those seeking holy grails, golden chords or lost shakers of salt, Kraftwerk aficionados are in search of the random boings, booms and tschaks.
Kicking off its Multimedia Tour at Franklin Music Hall in celebration of the 50th anniversary of its chart-topping breakthrough Autobahn (one year late, we might add), Kraftwerk only played that LP’s slow, bouncing title track. And not even at its original album-side length of nearly 25 minutes. But these inventors of robo synth-pop and purveyors of precise, hypnotic repetition spun a tight, techno-delic web of purely electronic sound from the moment Hütter, Henning Schmitz, Georg Bongartz and Falk Grieffenhagen stepped onstage.
Wearing matching graph-schematic-framed, lit-up uniforms in front of the multi-media backdrop, the quartet of Kraftwerkers kicked into the rubbery kinesis of “Numbers,” “Computer World” and “Computer World 2” all in one swallow. Making un-merry medleys of most of its tracks (the breathalyzer-vocal-heavy “It’s More Fun To Compute” ran into the house-music-haunted “Home Computer”), the still-standing Hütter and Co. let its music do the talking. As always, save for the band’s usually processed vocals, Kraftwerk’s physical presence is wordless and motionless. The ping-ponging Euro-melodic movement of “The Robots” and ascending, cooly clinking counterpart “The Man-Machine” aren’t just songs—they’re thesis statements.
One of the things that was most fascinating about this tour’s opening night (and I’m sure that the setlist throughout this tour is static) is that for all its motorik forward motion and tech-y metallic grooves, there was more than a few slower, roomier moments that took their time to unfold, such as “Spacelab.” Sexier, slinkier songs, too, like the simmering house music-ish “La Forme” and “Neon Lights,” coursed their way through Kraftwerk’s two-hour set—all without blowing anyone’s high or knocking dancers off their step.
The threatening industrialism of “Radioactivity,” the martini-chilled spiciness of “Tango” and the gear-shifting groove of the “Tour De France”/“Tour De France Étape 3”/“Chrono”/“Tour De France Étape 2” suite all paved the way for the digital chug of the “Trans-Europe Express” medley, which featured the eerily elegant tail of “Metal On Metal” and “Abzug.” The kling-klanging finale of “Boing Boom Tschak” and “Musique Non Stop” was a perfect close of dry-air electronica and dicey, heart-pounding rhythm—the latter extended and open enough to allow each member to take his bow and for Hütter to get his applause-meter-loud flowers from the audience.
Hand held his over his heart and taking it all in, Hütter quietly said, “Auf wiedersehen,” then disappeared into the darkness, allowing “Musique Non Stop” to, indeed, go on forever as the crowd exited the building.
Perfect.
—A.D. Amorosi; photos by Matt Bishop
