Kraftwerk's influence on every kind of music is unparalleled. That's right: every kind of music. From electronic music to rock, hip-hop to ambient, jam to jangle, modern music has been shaped by the band's innumerable seminal albums.
Started in Düsseldorf in 1970 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, the band was tied to the emerging krautrock movement. They soon fully embraced a more mechanical approach, incorporating synthesizers, drum machines, and vocoders, and thus expanding the way electronic instruments were used in popular music. Schneider left the band in 2008, before sadly passing away in 2020.
Kraftwerk has continued under Hütter, with numerous musicians and technicians filling out the band. They've toured constantly — and consistently — throughout the 21st century, and on their latest multimedia outing celebrating the 50th anniversary of Autobahn, the band have put together a bold, brilliant and beautiful show that stands as a fitting summary of their first 55 years.
A robotic voice obviously introduced the performance, before a set of neon green numbers counted up from one to eight in German. The Man Machines walked out to the pulsing, opening sounds of "Numbers" from 1981's Computerwelt clad in light-adorned, green-glowing bodysuits, the lights showing robotic x-rays of their digital insides.
The band played selections from throughout their discography, their outfits lighting up as intensely as the backdrop, which itself was a kaleidoscopic montage of flashing, strobing lights. They even mashed up various tracks into medleys, tweaking their already-classic compositions into new, yet instantly recognizable, forms. During "Computerworld," the lyrics flashed giant behind the band, reminders of the various institutions that control our data and our memory. The song was written 44 years ago, and my, how little has changed.
Every part of the stage set up effervesced and blitzed, sometimes feeling organic and alive, other times rooted in frames, grids and binary. The kinetic visuals swirled, warm and inviting, then turning into something more menacing. Red was both friendly and terrifying, multicoloured joy melting into black and white austerity. Everything changed colours, a rainbow of visuals that offset the foursome's notoriously static performance style.
The images included computer clip art; the inside of a spaceship looking over the surface of a looming planet; a VW Beetle and the Autobahn logo and cover art; a map that pinpointed Toronto as a satellite flew around it; and a set of photos of Toronto and Massey Hall with a spaceship landing in front of the historic venue. Some of it was delightfully kitschy, even cheesy, but that was part of the fun, which this show certainly was.
The band's high-tech synths, keyboards, drum machines and samplers are housed in minimalist podiums, but these also received the light-box treatment. The sound and performance were exceptional and tight throughout, which is to be expected, and hearing these songs live reminds one how unbelievably influential and forward-thinking this band really was — and and continues to be. Everything DJs think they're doing now, Kraftwerk did 40-plus years ago, and better.
There were recreations of album covers and classic images, retro art styles and early computer graphics, pop art, comic book onomatopoeia, and musical notes. Fractured computer chips, like the inside of a CPU's mind, flashed and overlapped during "Home Computer," while "Airwaves" brought a starker look to the proceedings, a monochromatic soundwave moving across the screen with an off-beat pulse to the aforementioned podiums.
During "The Man-Machine," abstract Bauhausian shapes danced while the album's red colour scheme flashed across the suits, the podiums, and the stage, which itself was adorned with the slowly scrolling words "Man Machine." While the song's minimal yet prescient (some would say apocalyptic) sentiment is rife for distillation and analysis, live, it becomes a hypnotic experience that pulls you into the machine, not away from it.
Massey Hall was an interesting choice of venue. While experiencing the artistry was part of the experience, standing up and dancing while witnessing this in a warehouse would have been more fitting. The crowd, which predominantly and unsurprisingly skewed older, sat with almost quiet and severe reverence. A few people peppered through the venue stood up and danced, but never throughout (I've seen more dancing at academic conferences). This was clearly a sit-down affair. The whoops and hollers came very sporadically, and the people seemed entranced by the show unfolding in front of them.
It was also odd hearing such pulsing beats blasting through the Massey speakers while looking around to see hundreds of sitting faces pointed forward, unmoving, as if in a trance. It felt like watching an electronic opera or a live-scored film. This isn't a slight or an admonishment; this show was its own thing, a different kind of musical. Luckily, the venue's robust sound system perfectly translated the band's booms, drones, twinkles and bass rumbles, never faltering. The reno has served you well, Massey.
During "Electric Café," an ever-expanding and contracting black and white box trapped the band's pixelated avatars, which are often used as the group's logo on albums and merchandise — a reflection of not only their performance style, but the screen that will frame them throughout this tour. Very meta.
At times, such dedication to technique and technology might seem cold and distancing, but it was anything but. In fact, there is something surprisingly holistic about Kraftwerk's show, an embodied experience rather than a concert. It drew the crowd in, entertained and perplexed, and most importantly, acted as a compendium to the music. In fact, the technology is the music; it is the art. That's what one must come to expect from Kraftwerk.
"Computer Love" was ethereal and practically transcendent (damn you Coldplay and your ape of that glistening piano line), while the "Tour de France" medley featured a lot of bikes, and the fragile "Neon Lights" let Hütter's melancholic voice swoon over the breezy, plaintive piano lines and clicking beats.
The nuclear-warning "Radioactivity" sent us traveling down a nameless tunnel, perhaps a silo. You could feel the bass though the floor, through the seats, reverberating through your whole body. A truly haptic experience. Dancing isotopes, the names of towns destroyed by meltdowns and bombs, and Japanese letters reflecting the song's lyrics flashed throughout, reminders of the devastation that nuclear weapons can cause. It was an intense but essential moment in an otherwise joyous evening. It was also the night's best, most effective — and affective — performance; harrowing, angry, emotional and bombastic.
The crowd clapped along during the "Tour de France" medley, finally getting into the show physically and moving past their awe. A second attempt was horribly off-beat, and short-lived, which was hilarious since this music is so very precise. Soon after, two audience members near me stood up to dance. They moved for less than one song, brought back to their seats by some crowd-think desire for stationary homogeny — which kind of makes sense at a Kraftwerk show, since this is exactly the kind of mentality they've always tried to get us to think about and get away from.
The main set ended with "Trans Europa Express" (is there any other way?), the titular train looming and zooming behind the band as that iconic piano line cut through the venue. Bridge schematics showed during the "Metal on Metal" portion of the mashup, the grinding, clanking track booming off the walls and domes of the audience. Industrial: check. As they exited the stage before the encore, they stayed in sync: left, right, left, right; clang, clang, clang.
For the encore, the band came back out to the opening strains of "The Robots," as uncanny automaton versions of themselves jittered on screen behind the lyrics. In the crowd, a fellow robot, with a blue LED headband and hand lights, started dancing directly across the venue from me. They were soon asked to turn off the gear, but their dedication made it all worthwhile. A strobe light flashed sporadically yet brilliantly in the rafters throughout the song, brightly illuminating the most polite rave ever!
Kraftwerk closed the show with a medley of songs from 1986's Electric Café ("Boing Boom Tschak," "Techno Pop," and "Musique Non Stop"), an interesting and inspired choice, since these songs summarize not only the band's role in music history, but also their love for performance, for melody, and for the sounds of rhythm. The visuals closed with human schematics, reducing the body to a series of linear lines, removing all of the softness yet showing how we are as intricately designed as the machines we are so intimately tied to.
With a series of individual bows under a single spotlight — and without a word, of course — they exited stage left, Hütter left by himself as an endless loop played, the musique bubbling non-stop… until it did. He then walked off to a standing ovation, back to the mothership and onto the next venue to blow more minds.
Watching these elder statesmen play was truly monumental, their performance handled with grace and executed with aplomb and ease. They played for exactly two hours. Clockwork. And apart from one very small corner of the screen flickering on and off during the second half, technically, the show seemed to go off without a hitch.
Performing what is essentially a greatest hits set to some arresting, comforting, glittering, stark, and unsettling (sometimes all at once) visuals, Kraftwerk's show at Massey was a revelation, an experience, an event. It stands as a reminder that, whether human, automaton, or otherwise, you're never too old to groove. Remember that, humans, the next time the Robots come to town.