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Kraftwerk: Publikation
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This is a new and major biography of the first-ever all-electronic pop group and one of the most influential bands in popular music history, Kraftwerk.
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I really enjoyed 'Kraftwerk: Publikation' by David Buckley, having previously really appreciated his Bowie biography.
It was finally seeing Kraftwerk live, on 7 June 2017, that inspired me to read 'Kraftwerk: Publikation'. This show, their 3-D show, has had me in a Kraftwerk frame of mind ever since.
As a teenager in the late 1970s Kraftwerk were a band my friends and I were in thrall to. We loved them. That love has endured. Needless to say when they pitched up in my back yard, and despite an ey ...more
It was finally seeing Kraftwerk live, on 7 June 2017, that inspired me to read 'Kraftwerk: Publikation'. This show, their 3-D show, has had me in a Kraftwerk frame of mind ever since.
As a teenager in the late 1970s Kraftwerk were a band my friends and I were in thrall to. We loved them. That love has endured. Needless to say when they pitched up in my back yard, and despite an ey ...more
For a generation of kids who came of age during the 70s, raised on the grand notion of the Epic, Twiddly Guitar Solo, watered-down, lowest-common-denominator weekend and blues rock, blow-dried dudes in kimonos and satin pants who all seemed to be in love with the same girl (her name was “Mama”), and mini prog epics based on Tolkien, the legend of King Arthur, or Mussorgsky, the addition of the single version of Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn” (read: edited down from an entire album side to a more managea
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Some writers are able to make even the most apparently dull subject matter compelling (for example, Michael Lewis). Others take a subject full of fascinating potential and proceed to render it in the dullest possible way. I'm sad to report that this book falls into the second category. A 400-page account of Kraftwerk should be gripping, insightful, esoteric (in a good way), and at an intellectual level appropriate to its subject. This account just felt banal and rote. It's also a lesson in not j
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with as expected no real access to the main men. it relies on hearsay and gossip. not the most reliable way to write a biography. there is no real revelations either. and more than a few small errors. Depeche mode debut single wasn't new life. music from the catherine wheel wasnt by Byrne and Eno. and Coldplay have never been on the artistic margins while being successful. it was ok but no real insight into the group.
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Superb biography of the ground-breaking German electronic band
Excellent read - learned quite a bit about the post Second World War German generation of youth and gave new insights into this great band
Utterly interesting for fans of the band, but I can't think it would be anything but dull to anyone else. Perhaps it does read like an entertaining little story of egos, jealousies and petty rivalries. Flür does come across as more than a little bitter, Bartos looks more graceful and more relevant than one would have thought. Ralf and Florian... only speak through past interviews.
A wealth of information about how each album was made and how they were left stuck in repeat when the world finally c ...more
A wealth of information about how each album was made and how they were left stuck in repeat when the world finally c ...more
A superb tour d'horizon of Kraftwerk's extraordinary journey, and yet so much more. Buckley obviously knew that logistically a conventional fact-based biography of Kraftwerk isn't possible, and there is so much more interest in looking at the members, their forming influence and their context as an analysis. The chapters on their early career with the cultural backdrop of post-Nazi Germany are particularly fascinating. The ubiquitous presence of Bowie at certain chapters felt overdone, there wer
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This is a “good” book on Kraftwerk. The environment that created the band, and their influences on other musicians (Orchestra Maneuvers in the Dark is mentioned so often you might mistake this as their biography). As secretive as the two main members are, you can credit David Buckley for painting as complete a picture as one can considering the information available. In hindsight I wish I had picked up Pascal Bussy’s ‘Kraftwerk: Man, Machine and Music’ or an un-redacted English version of Wolfga
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Omdat het duo dat de kern vormt/vormde van Kraftwerk (Ralf Hütter en Florian Schneider) altijd zelf weinig persoonlijke aandacht zocht en privé-informatie beschermde tegen al te nieuwsgierige fans en journalisten, is dit boek van David Buckley niet het soort biografie waarin je veel te weten komt over hun levens (maar wel een beetje natuurlijk). Wel krijgen we hier een overzicht van de groei van de band en hoe en waarom ze zo invloedrijk werd. En al bevestigt het boek dat na halfweg de jaren tac
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A solid journey through the cloaked history of Kraftwerk. A well written and engaging read drawing from many sources to reveal an insight into the secretive world of a ground breaking band. Best read with the soundtrack of each chapter. Also make sure you dig into the sounds of the associated bands and references of you haven’t done so already.
A tremendous insight into one of the most secretive bands that I follow. Full of insightful facts and accolades that many fans of the band won’t know, and written in a easy-going way. Top read for both the die-hard Kraftwerk fans and those only interested in the genre or music altogether.
Viagem sobre q história da banda , do mundo e da música com todas as interações q essa banda teve …
As a book about Kraftwerk without input from Ralf and Florian, this is probably as good as it gets.
Upfront it is made clear that there is no new information in the book from the mouths of the two pivotal Kraftwerk ‘frontmen’, Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. It is this starting point that is crucial to the form the book takes and leads to both its strengths and weaknesses.
In the absence of any new data from the main men, the author is forced to create a holistic view. The author takes snippet ...more
Upfront it is made clear that there is no new information in the book from the mouths of the two pivotal Kraftwerk ‘frontmen’, Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. It is this starting point that is crucial to the form the book takes and leads to both its strengths and weaknesses.
In the absence of any new data from the main men, the author is forced to create a holistic view. The author takes snippet ...more
This started really promising, with a lot of interesting background on the cultural scene that formed the band and interviews with early collaborators. But the reality is that the band themselves have gotten quieter and quieter, and information about them has gotten sparser and sparser. And as the book goes on it gets less and less interesting as it features less interesting insights or intriguing facts and becomes more focused on a) the gripes of ex members and b) awestruck recollections of var
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A nice overview of the history of this major band and its impact on modern music. Not much new historically that hasn't been covered by previous books and interviews (although updated to within the last couple of years), but the discussions of the music itself and connecting it to the trends of the last 40 years is quite interesting.
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David Buckley had a tough job ahead of him to write a deep book about Kraftwerk without having access to the main players, but he still manages to pull together a decent overview of the band's history. Though, I have to admit to being a little disappointed by how much simply pieces together large gaps based on conjecture of fans' opinions (no matter how famous those fans may be).
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I'm very much in a Kraftwerk mood/frame of mind right now - so the book
was good timing for me in that sense. Obviously it's 'incomplete' given
the band doesn't really do a lot of talking but it covers off the periods/albums well.
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was good timing for me in that sense. Obviously it's 'incomplete' given
the band doesn't really do a lot of talking but it covers off the periods/albums well.
...more
Excellent reading on one of the greatest bands of all time. Places the band in context and covers the musical genres they inspired with great quotes from those artists.
Nothing really new, but good fun if you're a die hard fan like me :)
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“We had to redefine our musical culture. Not only our musical culture, however: at the end of the sixties all German artists had the same problems. Writers, directors, painters … all of them had to invent a new language.”
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“The year 1968 was also ground zero for popular music in Germany. Karl Bartos, in 1968 a 16-year-old gifted classical musician, puts it like this: ‘We don’t have the blues in our genes and we weren’t born in the Mississippi Delta. There were no black people in Germany. So instead we thought we’d had this development in the twenties which was very, very strong and was audio-visual. We had the Bauhaus school before the war; and then after the war we had tremendous people like Karlheinz Stockhausen and the development of the classical and the electronic classical. This was very strong and it all happened very close to Düsseldorf, in Cologne, and all the great composers at that time came there. During the late forties up until the seventies they all came to Germany; people like John Cage, Pierre Boulez and Pierre Schaeffer, and they all had this fantastic approach to modern music, and we felt it would make more sense to see Kraftwerk as part of that tradition more than anything else.”
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