Laser, Crystalline - RIP Florian Schneider.

Mid-seventies. A bunch of Teutonic accountants with gominaed Lego Man hair and matching pocket protectors storm the Top of the Pops with a twelve-note melody played on electronic keyboards, kazoo and synthdrums, forcing the Pan People to stuff their leopard up their crack and march in uncertain formation underneath falling glitter coloured balloons. Good thing that the-Germans-don't-have-a-sense-humour (copyright any English pub bore).The disturbing mid-level managers intone about computer worlds, frigid models and the joys of cycling (true to German form, they are just predating the English way of life by twenty years). They stand behind lecterns, stiffer than anyone watching Alexis Love stepping out of her bath, press buttons with even less facial expression than the already thirty-something future Pet Shop Boy Chris Lowe, conspicuously fail to make any mention of towels (cue: “Har har!” from the aforementioned) and generally speak forinn (what da fuck can “das Model” mean???).

Dads scratch their hair, mums dutifully refill the kettle, and a hundred youths experience a veritable light-switch inside their brains. These youths include the likes of David Bowie, Brian Eno, Ian Curtis, OMD, Ultravox, the Human League, Scanner, the Space Girls. (OK, maybe not the Space Girls.)

The name of the band is Kraftwerk.

As someone (that will be me) was to remark forty+ years later, not many bands can lay claim to changing the course of modern music. Kraftwerk is unquestioningly one though.

Created at the neon-end of the sixties by Florian Schneider and Ralf Hu:tter in Dusseldorf, Kraftwerk hailed from the same country as Can, Neu or Tangerine Dream – bands that the epitome of clenched buttocks The Gaurdiaan still calls to this day without blinking (but with banning those who call them out on that) “kr*trock”. Kraftwerk underwent a series of changes in personnel before settling on a quartet slash quintet slash triplet formula that operated in secrecy in their Heidi Kling Klumm Klang studio. A friend of mine once pilgrimaged to their King Kong DummKopf HQ ...only to discover that it has since been converted into a garage or something. (In the same spirit, the Manchester venue where a bunch of generic punkers became Joy Division one Battle-of-the-Bands night became a Pizza Express. “People like you find it salty... / They're walking on bread...”)

Andy Whatshihsname out of OMD once admitted that their debut single “Electricity” had been shamelessly lifted off the Kraftoes' “Radio-Activity”. Even better, OMD didn't have a sequencer and so they couldn't just program the bass-line or whatever to run for the duration of the song, which means that they physically had to play every note. What's the big deal, I hear some say? Well go back and listen to these early tracks of theirs, you might spot a few “beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep (beep beep)” sounds...

When Beethoven set about composing his symphonies, he didn't have in mind to put his club-foot through the syrupy conventions of operatically correct Muuusic, it was because that pissy little Austrian prick needed to get shown up good and proper. 

Debonair, robotic, besuited, enigmatic, passionate about cycling (more on that subject later) and the owner of a faraway smile, Florian soon conquered the hearts of a million Frauleins, as well as an ever growing band of influential followers. Reveals Marshall MacLuhan: “When I redefined the rules of media analysis, I drew inspiration from Florian's suit made of recycled thrift-shop carrier bags. It was a revelation.” (-Ed: check origin of quote.) Concurs Alex Ferguson: “When I drove Kevin to distraction, I was merely co-opting Florian's ironic debunking of self-destructive emotionalism.” Actuel, The Wire, Fiesta, all these magazines would probably have had nothing to write about without Kraftwerk.

When Klaus Nomi took to wearing black lipstick and geometric plastic bags, it wasn't to proclaim his desperate right to difference in a heartless world – it was because he had run out of Lynx.

Kraftwerk thrived on minimalism. They eschewed long hair, patchouli and potentially fatal pushbike rear wheel spoke jamming scarves of the kind espoused by bands dubbed by The Gruadain to belong to the “kr*trock”genre (has it already been mentioned?). Instead, they invested in power anthracite suits and funky black-and-red numbers (but then Florian could afford these sartorial eccentricities, what with his dad having built Cologne's airport or something). Predating Teresa May by thirty years, Kraftwerk also toyed with the idea of replacing their human selves with robots onstage (“the man-machine”). It was a brilliant idea, and you wonder what they must have thought of Roger Waters's original plans for the staging of The Wall. They probably didn't care though. They must have thought, that this a tribute of sorts was.

Beethoven was so deaf - he thought he was a painter.

One of the things the 'Werk (as nobody calls them) uncovered and sublimated was not just the hypnotic power of repetition (I am thinking “Autobahn” here) - but its unexpected evocative ability (say, “Neon Lights”). Explains Haneke: “If I show you two people playing ping-pong for a minute, you'll find it mildly interesting. If I show you two people playing ping-pong for two minutes, you will get bored. Three minutes? You'll start getting annoyed, seriously annoyed. Now if I continue to show you two people playing ping-pong for five minutes, you will start questioning my motives. You will wonder. You will ask yourself: 'What is he trying to say here? There must be a point to this, there's got to be a message being conveyed...' - and you'll pay renewed attention.” (adapted)

Kraftwerk were intelligent enough -yes, I know- to understand the possibilities offered by endless remixes, which would unshackle their original material from its supposedly fixed coda and allow it to flourish in multiple directions. Hence their subsequent decision to tour extensively – and reinvent themselves accordingly. Just ask yourself: What could be said to constitute the definitive version of “Radio-Activity”, “Trans-Europ Express” or “ich ha:ng immer noch an dir”? Huh? … So there you go. Multiplication > Adaptation > Stagnation. Me da > yer mum.

Leaving aside other ((substantially more decisive)) reasons ((that don't fit with the effing point being currently belaboured)), the Kraaft's strategic change of focus may well explain why, all things considered, its productivity will not have reached the levels of the Paisley Park carry-ons. Probably is this a shame, yes we are thinking. But then consider the quality of the following long players: “Autobahn” (“da-da-da, die Autobahn...”), “Radio-Activity” (the one that was “discovered by madame Curie”), “Trans-Europ-Express”, “The Man-Machine”, “Computer World”. Eat your heart out, the Kaiser Chiefs!!

Just like it is often claimed that if you speed up Beethoven, what you get is Mozart (copyright Houellebecq), you can safely claim that: Kraftwerk were the Beatles of the twenty-first century; simplicity is the mother of efficiency; in their own way they were hilarious – deffo funnier than “On the Buses”, Angela Merkel, “The Pale King”'s 34^th chapter, death, taxes, mosquitoes – or even “Friends”; they showed more balls than Eddie Murphy's hitch-hikers; there is an idea of Kraftwerk, a mental image that makes up for their self-actualisation – but they're not really here and never were; their studio work made Robin Guthrie come across as a chancer slacker on an improv night; there are only two kinds of people in the world: those who can extrapolate a statement based on an incomplete premise.

With song structures are almost as complex and ambitious as Moby's, perfect sing-song accented English and a carefully hidden beatific smile, Florian and his merry pranksters chose a card, any card, put them on the table in typical-Germanic-efficiency, threw them in the air and pissed on them from a great distance. They liked it when a plan worked to perfection. “Quand Charlotte se touche, le ciel ouvre la bouche.” The sound you hear when you reconnect first thing in the morning would not have existed without Kraftwerk. The sonic architecture you navigate through every day would not have existed without Kraftwerk. Hell, the very songs you play when you click on the illegally downloaded Kraftwerk MP3 would not have existed without Kraftwerk!

Was it a band? A collective? A school of audio engineering? Kraftwerk was the favourite band of certain French piano playing philosophy graduates stuck in Manchester.

As alluded to earlier, Florian was also known for another (both time consuming and physically demanding) passion: cycling. The Germans being as always ahead of- and fitter than- the Brits, cycling -alongside recycling, ecology, philosophy, football, naturism and a more relaxed approach to genocide (-Ed: are you sure about this one?)- always was a big thing in the MotherLand, with nobody as crazy about bicycling than our Florian. Already renowned in his teenage years throughout the State of Bavaria (if that's where Dusselforf is, otherwise I don't give a flying fuck: it's the only one I know) for delivering the paper right on the dot on his 5am morning rounds, Florian also took on providing meals on wheels (light on the Mayo, Knoppfel on the side) to little old ladies as well as restorative midmorning full breakfasts to sexclubsaunas yeah, gaining in the process not one but two new sections of grateful admirers (he didn't even forget to add a dollop of SchkumpfzeinmuBtard for effect).

Cue Kraftwerk's 1983 single: “Tour de France Tour de France”, and its catchy chorus “da-da-da, le Tour de France” (repeat 15 times, start all over again). Yes, it was a lonk way from “Wings of Change (we will reuck you)”; “Du Hast” it was most certainly not, but this little ditty (available in eight-, thirteen- and fifty-two- minute format) made sense. It spoke to the twelve-gear enthusiasts and tandem fetishists (“Which seat shall I take? Chillin' in the front seat (front seat) or cruisin' in the back seat (back seat)?”)

Why do the French insist on planting plane trees alongside their motorways? Why, it's to provide shade for our German friends next time they decide to invade us again.

The story goes that Florian left the band following a dispute about a bicycle pump. This story is too good to be fake. The thing is, nobody actually noticed that he was no longer part of the band for a number of years: by then, Kraftwerk had ascended to another level, the one where bands don't have to abide by the same single-then-album-then-tour rules – and I am reminded of that joke: You may or may not have heard the news: the Rolling Stones have released a new song, and the “rock critics” have dubbed it “their best in years”.

Anyway.

Florian Schneider left this world the same mysterious way he left Kraftwerk: his death was disclosed a week later, the day after the shocking announcement about Dave Greenfield. Comparing the two would be of course a bit of a contrived, crowbarred in exercise, it's just that this week has been a bit of a double whammy: two hugely influential and respected keyboard mavericks, better known for their work in the seventies and eighties, have left us.

Once again, not many bands can be said to have changed the course of modern music. Who could ever deny that Kraftwerk has been one.

LoigAllix is the author of “Kraftwerk In Space -the wonderful and totally fictitious story of Tangerine Dream”.