Kraftwerk

Radio progs celebrating 50 years of Autobahn.

Late Junction: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002457z

50 years after Kraftwerk's seminal album Autobahn was released, Jennifer Lucy Allen revisits the record and explores how it changed the dial on how we think about sound.

We dig into the BBC archive for a live session from 1975 and hear an interview with drummer Wolfgang Flür, explaining how the band’s fascination with speed and cars shaped their perception of sound.

Drilling down on the connection between Autobahn and Detroit, Drexciya’s DJ Stingray 313, talks about how the album influenced the city’s techno scene. Kraftwerk’s music chimed with those in Motor City, making it onto the club dance floors and across local radio. Kraftwerk’s vision of a mechanised, motorik future offered a sense of optimism in the rubble of postwar Germany. Similarly, the clean futurism of techno provided a window onto a brighter future in Detroit, a city hit hard by the decline of the car industry.

Elsewhere, we play music for motorways with a track by Yeah You recorded in their car, cut up sounds from Le Cars and country music for roadside motels.

Unclassified - Autobahn at 50: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0024dmd

Released on 1 November 1974, Autobahn was the album that marked the moment when Kraftwerk fully embraced electronic pop music and honed the futuristic, mechanized aesthetic that would become famous. The record was an international success in spite of some decidedly mixed early reviews; and its influence has been felt across a wide variety of genres in the half century since.

Herself a visitor of the band’s iconic Kling Klang studios in Düsseldorf, Elizabeth Alker considers Kraftwerk’s classical roots, placing the album in the context of Twentieth-Century German Classical Music (the musicians themselves have cited the expressionism of Schönberg and Stockhausen’s experiments with sound as key influences.) And, as can be heard in the iconic title track, which unfolds over twenty minutes, the band were borrowing from traditions of structuring music that harken back to older, classical forms, too (in the bringing back and development of themes). Elizabeth also plays contemporary tracks that share a musical kinship with Autobahn, and owe it too, perhaps, a debt of gratitude.