Electro? Electro-Funk?


  • Man, I don't hear anything near a danceable beat on any of those albums prior to TEE. It is obvious that before TEE they were not concerned with people dancing to their music, and that from TEE on they were. That change in mindset had to come from somewhere. Of course I am just conjecturing that Hip-Hop played some influence on that, but something made them decide that they wanted to make music that people would want to dance to.

    Zitat von elektroakust.;64806

    The second time they played in the USA and in New York was 1981 with the release of the
    "Computerwelt" album which includes "Numbers" which is still seen by many as the prototype
    beat of the later typical "Electro" style.

    So if their 1975 visit to New York didn't seem to have a immediate effect on their beats. Other than
    the influences that the drummer states (Funk, James Brown etc)... what internationally available
    record released in the late 70s by HIPHOP mindset driven producers should have been an influence
    for Kraftwerk on "Trans Europa Express" or "Numbers"?


    Before 1976 there were no Hip-Hop mindset producers as it was still an revolution that was being driven by DJs. However, at the same time that Kraftwerk was being influenced by this mindset others were as well, and '77 saw the beginning of break based tracks starting to drive the market, both in Disco and in other forms of dance music. They had started to trickle out in '76, then there were many more in '77. By '80 it was a flood. I am not accusing Kraftwerk of following this trend, I am pointing out that they were part of it.

  • Zitat von daro;64808

    Elektroakust I have a rare kraftwek BBC interview on tape,
    were they say david bowie station to station, was the biggest
    Influence on T,E,E


    Yeah, I have read that as well. "Station To Station" is a train themed track, and that part of it's influence on TEE is quite evident, right down to the train-like sounds and effects, but "Station To Station" isn't a dance record, while TEE is. What influenced Kraftwerk to start making DANCE records?

    Ask yourselves this question... what if Kraftwerk had remained an electronic experimental music group, more like Tangerine Dream or Jarre? Would the current form of Electro not be dance music? Or would it simply have been born of other Electro gods?

  • Bowie was over the moon, that kraftwerk paid homage
    to station to station, by putting in the lyrics on t.e.e,
    That he did track v-2 schneider on his very next LP
    Heros, 1977 to payback the tribute, you can hear the train
    at the start then the kraftwerk style vocoderish

  • Zitat von Cozmo D;64810

    Yeah, I have read that as well. "Station To Station" is a train themed track, and that part of it's influence on TEE is quite evident, right down to the train-like sounds and effects, but "Station To Station" isn't a dance record, while TEE is. What influenced Kraftwerk to start making DANCE records?


    might be purely coincidental:
    - trans europe express is the only danceable tune on the whole album (well, maybe except for metal on metal, but that's just a kind of TEE bonus beats). the other tunes have a "krauty", non-funky vibe.
    - as the story goes, kraftwerk went over to the duesseldorf train station the night before recording TEE.
    - the beat is a direct translation of a train sound, right down to the syncopation.
    - so foremost it would be an "industrial" record (in terms of emulating real-life sounds and turning them into beat/music).
    - so maybe it is a coincidence that it came out that funky?

    imo they didn't start deliberately making danceable music until computerworld.

  • No coz, david Bowie was dance music, in many
    forms, so much so they asked him to
    perform his billboard and dance chart no1 hit
    Fame on soul train 1975, can't post links here
    but YouTube David Bowie performs fame on soul
    Train.. Cats loved to dance to Bowie all ages and
    Colors

  • Zitat von lj;64812

    might be purely coincidental:
    - trans europe express is the only danceable tune on the whole album (well, maybe except for metal on metal, but that's just a kind of TEE bonus beats). the other tunes have a "krauty", non-funky vibe.
    - as the story goes, kraftwerk went over to the duesseldorf train station the night before recording TEE.
    - the beat is a direct translation of a train sound, right down to the syncopation.
    - so foremost it would be an "industrial" record (in terms of emulating real-life sounds and turning them into beat/music).
    - so maybe it is a coincidence that it came out that funky?

    imo they didn't start deliberately making danceable music until computerworld.


    Except that they found that the train syncopation "was not danceable" and they altered it to make it so. ;)


  • I know that David Bowie made SOME dance music. I was DJing back then, remember. However, "Station To Station" is NOT a dance record. That point is not even arguable.

  • Zitat von Cozmo D;64815

    Except that they found that the train syncopation "was not danceable" and they altered it to make it so. ;)


    wow, did they say so? :o
    would be most interesting to find out.

    (now it's getting ultra nerdy ... but once i was bored and wrote a piece where i traced in detail how that beat was constructed:
    http://cosmicrockdontstop.blogspot.de/2009/03/trans-…ruction-of.html
    just checked, and the audio files are still working ... yay!)

  • Zitat von lj;64812

    imo they didn't start deliberately making danceable music until computerworld.


    What about The Man Machine album? Lots of Disco beats on there. Kind of thinking that they were a bit influenced by Giorgio Moroder on that one, but that would be blasphemy! :D

  • Zitat von Cozmo D;64818

    What about The Man Machine album? Lots of Disco beats on there. Kind of thinking that they were a bit influenced by Giorgio Moroder on that one, but that would be blasphemy! :D


    oh, you are right of course!

    when i was writing danceable i only had funk music in mind, but Man Machine is a dance album too of course (in a 4-to-the-floor / disco / electro-pop kind of way).

  • Zitat von Cozmo D;64816

    I was DJing back then, remember. le.

    I don't know bro, what age you were djing in 75 ? I take a shot 10 ?

  • Zitat von Cozmo D;64809

    Man, I don't hear anything near a danceable beat on any of those albums prior to TEE.

    Maybe depends on the dancing style... jazz dance anyone? ;D

    Actually i wouldn't even consider the beat in TEE danceable...
    unless you speed up the record a lot.

    I would say too that their danceable stuff started with the Man Machine album.

  • Zitat von Cozmo D;64816

    "Station To Station" is NOT a dance record. That point is not even arguable.

    What ?? Stay and golden years are not dance records, they must have
    rocked more party's than a drunk bill murry, even columbos bad eye
    could see that.

  • Here are some excerpts from an interview with Karl Bartos


    You mention how even though you loved black music it wasn't your sound. What's interesting is how, very early on, you were embraced by black America – or certain parts of the black American concert going public at least.

    KB: "That happened not too long after my first encounter with Ralf and Florian. In 1975 we went over the Atlantic and spent 10 weeks on the road. We went from coast to coast and then to Canada. And all the black cities like Detroit or Chicago, they embraced us. It was good fun. In a way apparently they saw some sort of very strange comic figures in us I guess but also they didn't miss the beats. I was growing up with the funky beats of James Brown and I brought them in more and more. Not during Autobahn or Radioactivity but more and more during the late 70s. We took some black beats into our music and this was very attractive to the black musicians and the black audiences in the States. In a way probably it reminds me of what The Beatles did. They took some Chuck Berry tunes and they transferred it to our European culture before taking it back to America and everyone understood that. In a way that was probably what we did with black rhythm and blues. But we mixed it of course with our own identity of the electronic music approach and European melodies. And this was good enough to succeed in America.


    With Trans Europe Express was there a conscious effort to repeat the transport motif that you'd initially explored on Autobahn? And what experiments did you use to capture that propulsive rail travel rhythm?

    KB: [laughing] "This is very, very funny! Nobody pointed this out! You are one of the first journalists to point out the repetition of the concept of transport but it is true. In a way it was a repetition of Autobahn. But on the other hand by using the train motif we were following the path of someone like Pierre Schaeffer who made the first piece of musique concrète by only using the sounds of trains. That was in our mind also. At that time being around with Autobahn and Radioactivity we'd had enough of creating from our German heritage and rather we were considering ourselves as European musicians. If you came to England or America everyone was putting us in the field of Nazi Germany of course. We had this centerfold in the New Musical Express which was really no fun. And at that time the idea of the European community by using the synonym of Trans Europe Express we had the feeling that we could do it; that we could succeed by using this symbol. Eventually we went to train bridges and were listening to the sound the train would actually produce and by using the final rhythm it was just a little faint because a train doesn't actually sound like this! Because on a train you have two wheels and then the next wagon is starting with another two wheels and if you cross the gap on the rails it makes the sound "da-dum-da-dum Da-dum-da-dum" but of course you wouldn't be able to dance to that! So we changed it slightly."


    http://thequietus.com/articles/01282…h-of-the-modern

  • Zitat von Cozmo D;64827

    I didn't say "Stay" or "Golden Years", I said "Station To Station". ???

    But kraftwerk are talking about station to staion all the LP
    Being a inspiration not just the title track,

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