Back in the seventies Kraftwerk were shiny and new, and to some degree controversial for readers of popular music publications such as Sounds and NME.
Their readers would get really agitated that here was s band that stood on stage and their machines did all the work. There was no obvious skill involved, it was tantamount to cheating they said.
It probably sounds incredulous to younger folk that this was a pervasive attitude and many thought that the burgeoning electronic scene was somehow a lesser form of music.
But the German act was always ahead of the game.
Before Kraftwerk there was the mighty Can, and early experimental works from Tangerine Dream, Faust, Amon Duul and Ash Ra Temple.
It was amid this extremely fertile ground that the foundations upon which Kraftwerk built their mighty empire of sound were born.
But what Kraftwerk appeared to bring eventually to the party was the uncanny ability to file off the rough edges and imbue this electronica with warmth and a beating human heart. Every time I hear Kraftwerk I hear soul music.
Cut to 2026 and then there was one, Ralf Hutter ( an incredible 79 years old this year) from the original most stable line up still here.
Florian Schnieder sadly passed away in 2020 and tonight three anonymous others take to their individual lecterns which resemble unfathomable computerised controls as if setting course on the USS Enterprise for some distant planet. A planet of sound perhaps?
With no support, Ralf and co, were on stage for around two hours, of mainly hits.
Opening with Numbers they jumped erratically between years. One minute you’re back in the Seventies with Trans Europe Express. The next you’re watching archival black and white footage of cyclists whilst the band thrash out an incredibly visceral lengthy version of Tour de France.
The version of Computer Love was divine (darling), whilst Radioactivity was given some startling imagery and the lyric has a new name added, Fukashima together with Harrisburg, Chernobyl and Sellafield. That was a definite highlight.
For Spacelab the visuals had a shit UFO land in the town centre. But we’re used to seeing alien forms in Nottingham so weren’t impressed. Autobahn was similarly let down by the cheap visuals and Neon Lights was just insipid. Apart from those minor inconsistencies it was bloody superb.
Ralf got a well-deserved standing ovation at the end, and we got a rousing version of Robots for the encore.
Words and pictures by John Haylock
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