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So a couple of days before Old Years day last year, I watched a documentary about Kraftwerk which compared their impact and influence to that of The Beatles. Up until then, I had just vaguely known about the existence of Kraftwerk through discussions about Daft Punk, as that duo takes heavy inspo from Kraft.
I grew curious about their music, as I saw that Planet Rock, one of my brother's favourite songs to blast on a subwoofer, took inspiration and sampled from Trans-Europe Express. I decided to then sit down and listen to their music, starting with Autobahn, a 23 minute long song that captured that feeling you get driving on the road.
As soon as I started listening to it, the first thing which came to mind was the music from older Nitrome games (like maybe the 2006 - 2009 games). It has such an interesting "free" and uplifting vibe to it. Like your some kid on a road trip with your family and your looking out the window, and it's just bright blue skies and grassy green hills and maybe your passing some cows grazing in the fields. It has this interesting, kinda freaky part in the middle where there's this sort of "turbulence", like a traffic jam, that surprises you and breaks that peaceful vibe for a bit before it continues like normal. Prety cool stuff.
After that, I decided to check out some their live performances. The really interesting thing about them is that for the duration of the entire show, they just stand in place! It was weird to see at first, because you're so accustomed to seeing performers dance and sing and show emotion. But it makes sense in Kraftwerk's case because they're going for a "man meets machine" vibe with their works.
I really like how their songs sound live! I like the studio versions a lot too, but sometimes they sound a bit "flat" IMO. The live versions for some songs have more bass and energy to them, such as this live performance of Numbers (which is also one of my favourites from them). This song sounds hella good in the studio version too, tho!
I'll finish off this little ramble with this live performance for The Man Machine. It really captivated me the first time I heard it, and was also the song that sort of sealed the deal for me. I got hooked on their stuff because of this song and this performance's visuals! It's serious and mysterious, but also kinda hot to me for some reason. Interesting "minimalist" style to this one.
I think I'll make a little Kraftwerk stamp and share it here too, as I haven't seen any graphics for this band made on Neocities as yet.