List of Contributors Preface Introduction: The (Ger)man Machines David Pattie I. Music, Technology and Culture 1. Autobahn and Heimatklänge: Soundtracking the FRG Sean Albiez and Kyrre Tromm Lindvig 2. Kraftwerk and the Image of the Modern David Cunningham 3. Kraftwerk - The Decline of the Pop Star Pertti Grönholm 4. Authentic Replicants: Brothers between Decades between Kraftwerk(s) Simon Piasecki and Robert Wilsmore 5. Kraftwerk: Technology and Composition Carsten Brocker (Translated by Michael Patterson) 6. Kraftwerk: Playing the Machines David Pattie II. Influences and Legacies 7. Europe Non- Stop: West Germany, Britain and the Rise of Synthpop 1975-81 Sean Albiez 8. Vorsprung durch Technik - Kraft werk and the British Fixation with Germany Richard Witts 9. 'Dragged into the Dance' - The Role of Kraftwerk in the Development of Electro- Funk Joseph Toltz 10. Average White Band: Kraftwerk and the Politics of Race Mark Duffett 11. Trans-Europa Express: Tracing the Trance Machine Hillegonda Rietveld Discography Index
When they were creating and releasing their most influential albums in the mid to late 1970s, Kraftwerk were far from the musical mainstream.
Sean Albiez is the Programme Group Leader for Popular Music at
Southampton Solent University. He has been an active musician since
the mid-1980s, and has published scholarly work about John Lydon,
Krautrock, and Madonna.
David Pattie is Professor in Drama in the Department of Performing
Arts at the University of Chester, where he also taeches on the MA
in Popular Music. He is the author of Rock Music in Performance
(2007) and The Complete Critical Guide to Samuel Beckett (2001).
"No one but C-3PO makes love to Kraftwerk. No one liked them much
to begin with - certainly not in Germany.Yet they eventually
managed to attract sufficient critical mass to create a new star.
And everyone else found themselves firmly in orbit.This book of
original essays scrutinises their cultural influence from all
angles. Here, Kraftwerk are cast as Cousins of Iggy Pop, Duchamp,
Gilbert and George, Heirs to Hitler, Stockhausen, Gropius and The
Beach Boys. Brothers of Beuys and Bambaataa, Kin to Kiefer,
Godfathers of British Pop, Uncles of Rave, Midwives of Detroit
Techno, Sperm Donors of Dance - as mysterious and potent as the
monoliths in 2001, as daft as Punk, as indispensible to
understanding modern culture as Musclebuilding, Warhol, or Strictly
Ballroom.If this book were a film, it would move from macro to
micro every scene, if it were a meal it would be prepared by Heston
Blumenthal. It's a mutation waltz, a stumble rumba, a nimble mambo,
a complex minuet - and proof that cultural critics can dance." -
John Foxx, synthpop pioneer and multi-media artist
"Overall, one comes away from Kraftwerk: Music Non-Stop with the
impression of Hutter, Schneider and co creating a multifaceted
oeuvre on a par with that of Andy Warhol's, a brief phase from
either's artistic corpus capable of generating an entire career for
lesser talents."-The Wire
‘It is refreshing to encounter Kraftwerk: Music Non-Stop, a new
collection of academic essays on the band, which spurns fashion and
firmly returns the emphasis to ideas. Editors Sean Albiez and David
Pattie have assembled a compendium of rigorously argued and
illuminating discussions of the band, one that more than
compensates for the shallower latter-day ramifications of what Alex
Seago termed in 2004 the "Kraftwerk-Effekt".'
*The Oxonian Review*
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