Tag: Krautrock
This book, published just a couple of months before the death of Kraftwerk co-founder Florian Scheider earlier this year, is a timely retrospective of the band that changed the shape of popular (and not so popular) music forever.
Readers of this blog will no doubt include many die-hard Kraftwerk fans, so this general introduction probably won’t feature much information that is not already known. However, there is still something of interest to be found in this book. Aside from the usual biographies and discographies, Uwe Shütte considers the aesthetic and philosophical aspects that shaped the Kraftwerk sound and ethos.
German electronic music pioneer Hans-Joachim Roedelius has an interesting history. Born in 1934 he was an unwilling member of the Hitler Youth (membership was compulsory for boys over ten) and was a child actor in Nazi propaganda films. After the war, finding himself trapped on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall, he was imprisoned for two years following an unsuccessful attempt to cross to the west. Eventually, he managed to escape into West Berlin and formed the Zodiak Free Arts Lab with Conrad Schnirtzler.