Kraftwerk: Publikation

If you are a Kraftwerk fan do not hesitate to buy Kraftwerk Publikation. Well researched and well written. David Buckleys book is the best Kraftwerk book. Enjoy if you buy it.

Artists like Kraftwerk who use media silence to thwart fans from viewing their triumphs and failures as symptoms of biography ultimately fail. The reason is simple: fans will simply explain their heroes' music through the few biographical details that inevitably emerge. Or if they can't, they will simply create their own mythologies. If a band does not provide biography, fans will do it for them, and they run a real risk of their music being judged through half-truths and what amounts to little more than fairytales.While the members of Kraftwerk still remain inaccessible, the fifth decade of their career finds many historians who now see the group's contribution to rock and roll as being as important as the Beatles', The Velvet Underground's, or Chuck Berry's. For that reason, it's crucial that there be some sort of biographical document even when the two most important sources--the commentary of founding members Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider--are essentially non-existent. Buckley's book does about the best job one can piecing together a factually-accurate story despite some pretty large information hurdles.With interesting input from other Kraftwerk members, most notably the gracious and gentlemanly Wolfgang Flür and the clever and very talented Karl Bartos, as well as from key electronic pop musicians who offer personal commentary which is both intelligent and personal, Buckley offers us the best possible biography about very unwilling subjects. While full of details that will interest fans, it still provides enough context and analysis to interest anyone curious about the development of electro, hip hop, house, and techno, as well as the surprisingly important role of German musicians in shaping rock music history.

I thought this was very well written biography and a very interesting read. I learnt alot about a band I knew nothing about. I did however feel that the author had a real problem with Ralf Hutter - he seemed to blame him for the other members leaving the band and for carrying on without them. Sometimes this problem was in the text and sometimes it was in the tone, but it is clearly there. There was no evidence given that Ralf had pushed anyone out of the band. Florien specifically left because he didn't want to tour anymore and (I would guess) they are probably on good terms still - but maybe that doesn't provide enough drama. Wolfgang and Karl left because they only really got paid when they toured and at that time they were not touring. So it felt like a very unjustified takedown of the remaining member perhaps because the author sees Ralf as milking something he once loved? I can see that perspective but as a younger/newer fan it is great to see them continue (as long as the quality control stays high).

This is the best book on the notoriously secretive band I have come across. Excellent input & interviews with Ex robots Carl Bartos and Wolfgang Flur who seem like great and talented guys, both with a wicked & sharp sense of humour. Nothing of course from Ralf Hutter or Florian Schneider - who also left the band in 2008 and sadly died in 2020.This is great book with many stories throughout their long history - but in the end its quite a sad story ‘the’ classic line up releasing 5 amazing albums followed by the not quite as good ‘electric cafe’ then the original band slowly fell apart - Bartos leaving due to frustration over lack of activity, no new music and no performances, Flur leaving some years later for similar reasons not least because of the amount of time Hutter and Schneider were spending cycling - wasting years according to Flur. Emotions and tensions understandably run deep with the ex members, now successful as solo and collaborative artists, each member voices their own frustrations, but each also describe a sense of relief on leaving the band, reports that even Florian looked more relaxed and happy after departing - and it is Ralf Hutters ego that seems to have caused a depressing list of legal actions, fallings out, personal hurt and irreconcilable differences that follow rock cliche the very antithesis of Kraftwerk. When Florian left leaving Ralf and some random ‘robotniks’ Kraftwerk in its original form ended - they are almost a Kraftwerk.V2 or ‘Ralf Hutter plays Kraftwerk’ although in the most cutting edge way possible - no new music has been released outside of ‘Tour De France Soundtracks’ 17 years after ‘electric cafe’ and nothing since. The band concentrating on residencies in art spaces and museums a show akin more to an cultural experience than gig.David Buckley has done an amazing job producing this book about the secretive band (kling klangs phone famously had no ring). A must read for any Kraftwerk fans or fans of electronic music.

The cover looks great. Other than that the book begins with, and falls flat, with the statement that Hütter and Schneider were not available for interviews. Flür and Bartos were, but at least the latter also preferred to not engage in the subject matter all that much ("my quotations department is permanently closed"). This leaves the author with an array of secondary figures, disgruntled former contributors, publicly available sources, musicians (mostly British) more or less inspired by Kraftwerk and (predominantly) British music journalists of then and now sharing their impressions in according vocabulary. If you want to know what Andy McCluskey of OMD ever thought of any conceivable aspect of Kraftwerk, then this is your book. The author's own analysis reads mostly like a poor album review – statements whose main tool is the metaphor, in lack of a vocabulary for musical content, meting out a lot of judgement regarding some narrow or wider cultural, psychological or social aspect; discussing haircuts over and over and over again, and adding how blown away Andy McCluskey was about this or that – before discussing David Bowie's haircut of 1976 and asking an array of UK synth pop musicians about that in great length too. Oh, and Florian Schneider likes asparagus. That's elaborated on around three times.Naturally, there are some interesting bits here or there, but those you'd probably find in most books on Kraftwerk. It left me thinking that this is the work of a serial commercial biographer (Bowie, Elton John, REM) who totally depends on what's handed to him by his subjects and is utterly lost if they just can't be bothered to cooperate (and I suspect that's for very good reasons). Thus, the lack of precision in analysis – and if you'd expect one thing here, I guess that would be precision – seems almost like some indirect joke by Hütter and Schneider.

This was a nice introduction to “behind the scenes” of Kraftwerk but is also so,what limited due to the extreme privacy of the founding members. Thus a lot of the book cites 3rd parties or old interviews as the band has done virtually no meaningful press for decades. The book does a much better job of the early years than the later years, much like Kraftwerk themselves!

En esta edición de 2015 te pones al día del estado de la banda. Está escrito en un inglés fácil, para los que no están muy iniciados, y reúne mucha información desde las entrevistas en las que está basada la biografía.Tiene buenos apéndices, sobre todo, índice alfabético, discografía, etc.Debería incluir más fotografías entre el texto, no solo en dos secciones agrupadas, para esclarecer y adornar el contenido de lo que se dice.Es un libro en el que he aprendido más sobre la banda que en cualquiera de los editados...

A great detailed book. Written very well with a comprehensive knowledge of Kraftwerk. The book itself is of a high quality. I would reccomend this product, certainly a good one to read