Coachella Day Two: Kraftwerk

One of the fest's biggest letdowns came Saturday evening when Kraftwerk played the main stage. The German electronic legends had performed in the smaller Sahara tent in 2004 with much greater impact. Their set Saturday included most of the same songs, but lacked the freshness that seeing them on tour four years ago had. Plus, founding member Florian Schneider was not on hand (though it makes little difference to the group's actual sound). The foursome stood on stage, each facing his own laptop and they beeped, clicked and twittered through an hour's worth of ahead-of-its-time minimalist techno. Each song was matched to simple graphics displayed on the three videos screens, with their biggest hit "Autobahn" featuring vintage photos and film footage of the titular German expressway. Part of the problem was that the videos were far less entertaining than those they had on earlier tours. At the 2004 Coachella, Kraftwerk wore light-up suits that blended them in with the fast-moving images...here everything was mostly static.

Still promoting the alluring/fearful prospect of man and machine becoming one, it would be interesting if the group integrated new technologies into their model: Where are the allusions to such ubiquitous technologies as cell phones, Blackberries and the Internet, all of which may be bringing humankind closer to a fully digitized state each passing day? Now that Daft Punk has taken the same "Man v. Machine" manifesto and expanded it to include robot masks and a highly elaborate 3-D stage show, a live Kraftwerk performance seems quaint, though their music is still interesting and intelligent and their influence is incalculable.

Posted by David Lewis.

Comments

[Humphrey Clarkson]

"Where are the allusions to such ubiquitous technoligies as cel phones, blackberries and the Internet,"

they already did it in 81, er the album "Computer World" ? here's a 1981 pic:

http://www.getlofi.com/2005/10/computerwelt-circa-1981.html

plus at the end of the 97 tour still:

now their followers do it for them :

http://8BitOps.com