Kraftwerk at the Tate, with founder member Ralf Hutter on the left. 3D visuals were produced by Dataton’s WATCHOUT multi-image and presentation software, while an Iosono process driving d&b speakers delivered immersive audio
David Davies was invited for an exclusive look behind the scenes at the recent Tate Modern shows by German pop pioneers Kraftwerk
AS PSNEUROPE texted a friend shortly before Kraftwerk began its wildly anticipated eight-show residency at London’s Tate Modern gallery – “it’ll be four middle aged men who could easily pass for regional bank managers, hunched over laptops. What’s not to like?!” In fact, having seen the
electro-pop pioneers play the Royal Festival Hall some years previously, there was never any doubt that a powerful son et lumière spectacle was in prospect – but even that awareness wasn’t adequate preparation for an often breathtaking 2013 mark live show that incorporates pristine 3D sound and visuals. Not that ‘game-changing’
hasn’t always been part of the Kraftwerk manifesto. Founded by Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider in Düsseldorf in 1970, the band quickly abandoned its initial freeform rock leanings to experiment with early synths and self-built electronic drum kits. Finally reaching artistic maturity with the 22 transcendent minutes of Autobahn – their sleekly funky 1974 paean to motorway driving – Kraftwerk went on to define much of the territory for electronic pop and techno music with landmark albums including 1978’s The Man-Machine, and perhaps most influentially, 1981’s Computer World. With new releases few and far between over the last two
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decades, and Schneider leaving the band in 2008, Hutter and long-term colleagues, electronic percussionists Fritz Hilpert and Henning Schmitz, have increasingly focused on live work. The group members’ famously static, faintly deadpan hovering behind their workstations remains unchanged, but in many other aspects the in-concert Kraftwerk experience has evolved considerably, particularly over the last 12 months. 3D visuals have been part of the band’s live production for some years now – Kraftwerk are using the dynamic interactive and 3D features of Dataton WATCHOUT multi-display presentation software for all
other selected favourites. Tonight’s show – the second of the run – celebrates the album on which they began to embrace the pop song format, 1975’s Radio-Activity, while still allowing plenty of room for dark atmospherics and eerily treated vocals. As Hutter, Hilpert, Schmitz
on-stage digital scenography on their tours throughout 2013, in fact. But the band made another evolutionary jump during a retrospective season at New York’s MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) in April 2012. Even more recently, at an extended run of shows in their hometown of Dusseldorf this January, they unveiled a new three- dimensional audio production involving 30 sound sources located on the perimeter of the performance space. Band and crew were said to be delighted; reviewers were equally ecstatic.
TATE TWO All of which brings us to a rather wet evening in February 2013 and the staging of a similar retrospective in the Turbine Hall of London’s Tate Modern that combined the performance of one classic album per show with
and new recruit, video technician Falk Grieffenhagen, near the end of a soundcheck run-through of Radio-Activity’s Radioland that sends subtle sound flurries around the room, FOH engineer Serge Gräfe is in no doubt that they have achieved something very powerful with the latest configuration: “It really brings a fresh dimension to the show.” Integral to realising this
“fresh dimension” was Ralf Zuleeg, head of education and application support at Kraftwerk’s long-term loudspeaker brand of choice, d&b audiotechnik. Speaking to PSNEurope, he recalls a loose conversation with band production manager Winfried Blank in the middle of last year “about what else could be done with the band’s live sound”. A few months later, Hilpert and Schmitz were invited down to a Stuttgart club, Zapata, by Zuleeg, where he had recently paired d&b loudspeakers with the Fraunhofer Institute’s 3D wavefield synthesis technology that is utilised by Iosono in its