What is Kraftwerk’s purpose in 2026? It was a question I pondered during what was by any measure an immaculate display of electronica at the Brighton Centre on Saturday. The German pioneers’ astonishing work from 1974-1981 not just laid the foundations for modern music – techno, hip hop and computerised pop all owe an incalculable debt – but contended with an automated future not yet written. Their late imperial phase masterpieces – 1978’s The Man-Machine and 1981’s album Computer World – predicted a computerised world of online banking, internet dating and a symbiotic relationship between humans and robots. The former’s title track, a dark, dystopian take on how that might look, hit differently now that AI threatens to take the man out of the machine.
So it’s hard to reconcile that Kraftwerk are now a heritage act, which feels like the antithesis of their very essence. For the first time, we live in an age where technology has outstripped even Kraftwerk’s prescient predictions. There has been just one studio album in 40 years, 2003’s Tour de France Soundtracks; whatever band leader Ralf Hutter has been tinkering away on at the band’s legendary Dusseldorf studio-cum-HQ, Kling Klang, there was no new music aired. Bar the musicians’ updated LED jumpsuits that changed colour with the music, the show itself was essentially the same greatest hits show that Kraftwerk have been touring for over 25 years. The retro-futuristic and machine aesthetic visuals on what was dubbed Kraftwerk Multimedia, which seemed to have a clearer focus than recent tours, have been more or less identical for decades. The four members – sole founding member Hutter and three new-ish and seemingly interchangeable recruits – stand as motionless as ever as their workstations. You could say it’s a handy visual metaphor for a live show that has largely stood still.
And yet it is testament to their genius that a set so familiar maintains such distinct power. Perhaps it is because unlike every other heritage act, Kraftwerk’s music was future proofed from the start. And it’s been some time since I heard a better sounding concert. The music was crisp and pristine, its minimalism both beefed and sped up as required, synth rhythms and melodies precision-tooled and melded perfectly, sounding, as Bjork once put it so well, “very cold but also very, very warm.” From the opening Computer World section – the vocoderised beat-heavy “Numbers” through to the excitable arpeggios of “It’s More Fun to Compute” – to the wavy, galactic “Spacelab”, you felt the bassier notes rise through your body into your chest. Late-set highlight “Trans-Europe Express” turned propulsive rail travel into something industrial and claustrophobic, a counter to its earlier motorik cousin “Autobahn”, an uncharacteristically bright hymn to long-distance driving.
At 79, Hutter’s voice is now deeper, cracked at times, but it gave an oddly humanising touch, a hint of fallibility within the machine. It wasn’t the only time a more personal touch emerged: a moving mid-set tribute to late Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, a gentle cover of his track “Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence”, came with Hutter’s only comment all night. “Since 1981 and our very first concert in Tokyo we have been friends for ever,” Hutter said.
It was one of two unexpected happenings all evening. They encored with “The Robots” from 1978, which for years has been “performed” by remote controlled mechanical figures to a backing track. Instead, Hutter and co retook to their stations to play it live themselves. It seemed pointed. A reminder that man and machine need to co-exist now the robots threaten to take over? Perhaps that is Kraftwerk’s modern purpose: to warn us of the consequences now that the future they predicted is running out of control.
Kraftwerk play Bristol tonight, then touring
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