Kraftwerk (album)
Encyclopedia
Kraftwerk is the first album by German electronic
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...

 band Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...

. It was released in Germany in 1970, and produced by Konrad "Conny" Plank
Conny Plank
Konrad "Conny" Plank was a German record producer and musician. He was born in Hütschenhausen. His creativity as a sound engineer and producer helped to shape some of the most important and innovative recordings of postwar European popular music, covering a wide range of genres including...

.

Background

Chief Kraftwerk members Ralf Hütter
Ralf Hütter
Ralf Hütter is the lead singer, keyboardist, and reportedly leader of the electronic-music band Kraftwerk. Since the departure of Florian Schneider in 2008, he is also the group's sole remaining founding member....

 and Florian Schneider
Florian Schneider
Florian Schneider-Esleben is one of the founding members of electronic music band Kraftwerk. He left the band in November 2008.-Career:...

 used two drummers during the recording of the album; Andreas Hohmann and Klaus Dinger
Klaus Dinger
Klaus Dinger was a German musician and songwriter most famous for his contributions to the seminal krautrock outfit, Neu! He was also the guitarist and chief songwriter of new wave group La Düsseldorf and briefly the percussionist of Kraftwerk.-Pre-Neu! :Klaus Dinger was born in Scherfede,...

. Their playing provides the music with a rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...

 edge. This proves to be quite distinct from Hütter and Schneider's previous band Organisation
Organisation (band)
Organisation was an experimental Krautrock band, that was the immediate predecessor of the band Kraftwerk. In addition to the founding members of Kraftwerk, Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider-Esleben, Organisation consisted of Basil Hammoudi, Butch Hauf and Alfred "Fred" Mönicks.Charly Weiss, Peter...

, or the following pair of Kraftwerk albums, Kraftwerk 2
Kraftwerk 2
Kraftwerk 2 is the second studio album by German electronic band Kraftwerk, released in January 1972.-Background:Kraftwerk 2 was entirely written and performed by founding Kraftwerk members Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in late 1971, with the sessions produced by the influential Konrad "Conny"...

and Ralf und Florian
Ralf und Florian
Ralf und Florian is the third studio album by German electronic band Kraftwerk, released in October 1973...

which were both recorded entirely as a duo by Hütter and Schneider. According to later interviews with Dinger, he plays on side two ("Vom Himmel Hoch"), while Hohmann plays on side one ("Ruckzuck", "Stratovarius"), which was completed before Dinger joined the sessions.

The other instrumentation features Hütter on Hammond organ
Hammond organ
The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond in 1934 and manufactured by the Hammond Organ Company. While the Hammond organ was originally sold to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, in the 1960s and 1970s it became a standard keyboard...

 and a modified electric organ called a tubon (made by Swedish factory Joh Mustad AB), whilst Schneider supplied manipulated flute. The song "Ruckzuck" is driven by a powerful multi-dubbed flute riff, along with electric violin and guitar; these instruments often connected to further electronics via an Electronic Music Studios pitch-to-voltage converter.

The album tracks are all instrumentals, of which, "Ruckzuck" and "Stratovarius" are closest to a rock music approach in style. "Ruckzuck" has a tightly arranged opening section that includes a dramatic change of tempo, before an extended and largely percussive middle section, with an even faster reprise of the opening theme to end the piece. Following an extended drone opening played on keyboards, "Stratovarius" develops a scary organ intro as a looser succession of mainly guitar and drum based jams that build and break down. "Megaherz", a duet played by Hütter and Schneider, begins as a deep, rippling bass tone that steadily expands with electronic treatments to a discordant climax. Following this, there is a meditative middle section played with flute and keyboards, after which the piece closes with a series of wave-like crescendos of increasing intensity. "Vom Himmel Hoch" begins with distant-sounding drones that develop into Doppler effect
Doppler effect
The Doppler effect , named after Austrian physicist Christian Doppler who proposed it in 1842 in Prague, is the change in frequency of a wave for an observer moving relative to the source of the wave. It is commonly heard when a vehicle sounding a siren or horn approaches, passes, and recedes from...

 sweeps as the keyboards begin to mimic the sound of falling bombs. Eventually, a very coarse rock groove emerges (triggered by the first beats of Dinger's drums), that quickens in tempo and, after a brief sonic interruption, reaches an explosive finale.

A colour video recording from WDR exists of a concert performance of "Ruckzuck" by Hütter and Schneider's previous band, Organisation
Organisation (band)
Organisation was an experimental Krautrock band, that was the immediate predecessor of the band Kraftwerk. In addition to the founding members of Kraftwerk, Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider-Esleben, Organisation consisted of Basil Hammoudi, Butch Hauf and Alfred "Fred" Mönicks.Charly Weiss, Peter...

, as well as another black and white recording of it being played by the Hütter/Schneider/Dinger line-up of Kraftwerk.

The cover design, credited to Ralf Hütter, is a curious nod to the influence of Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

 and the then contemporary Pop Art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...

 movement, featuring a fluorescent-coloured traffic cone drawn in a Warhol-esque manner. The image on the inside of the gatefold sleeve is of a powerplant electricity substation (appropriately, as 'kraftwerk' means "power station" in German), photographed by Düsseldorf conceptualist artists Bernd and Hilla Becher
Bernd and Hilla Becher
Bernard "Bernd" Becher , and Hilla Becher, née Wobeser , were German artists working as a collaborative duo. They are best known for their extensive series of photographic images, or typologies, of industrial buildings and structures.- Biography :Bernd Becher was born in Siegen...

, known for their photographic Typologies series that celebrated the industrial and urban environment – and by extension, the society that built it – by showing multiple variations of ordinarily mundane building types. The smaller photos of the musicians were taken at the Essen "Grugahalle" Pop & Blues Festival on May 2, 1970 when Hütter & Schneider-Esleben were performing in proto-Kraftwerk band Organisation
Organisation (band)
Organisation was an experimental Krautrock band, that was the immediate predecessor of the band Kraftwerk. In addition to the founding members of Kraftwerk, Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider-Esleben, Organisation consisted of Basil Hammoudi, Butch Hauf and Alfred "Fred" Mönicks.Charly Weiss, Peter...

.

Guitarist Michael Rother joined the band after this album, and remarkably, around the same time Hütter actually left the band for a few months in 1971. The 3-piece Kraftwerk line up of Schneider, Dinger and Rother made a TV appearance on Radio Bremen
Radio Bremen
Radio Bremen , Germany's smallest public radio and television broadcaster, is the legally mandated broadcaster for the city-state of Bremen...

 TV show Beat-Club
Beat-Club
Beat-Club was a German music program that ran from September 1965 to December 1972. It was broadcast from Bremen, Germany on Erstes Deutsches Fernsehen, the national public TV channel of the ARD, and produced by one of its members, Radio Bremen, later co-produced by WDR following the 38th episode...

. After this, Dinger and Rother left to form revered band Neu!
Neu!
Neu! was a German band formed by Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother after their split from Kraftwerk in the early 1970s...

, with Hütter rejoining Schneider to continue Kraftwerk, both parties recording under the mentoring of Conny Plank.

No material from this album has been performed in the band's live set since the Autobahn tour of 1975, and to date, the album has not been officially reissued on compact disc
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...

. The band are seemingly reluctant to consider it a part of their canon – Schneider in later interviews referred to the first three Kraftwerk albums as "archaeology". However, pirated CD and vinyl pressings of the album have been widely available since the mid-1990s on the Germanofon and Crown labels. Nonetheless, Kraftwerk has hinted that the album may finally see a re-mastered CD release after their Der Katalog
The Catalogue
The Catalogue is a boxed set comprising eight albums by Kraftwerk that were released from 1974 to 2003...

 box set.

"Ruckzuck" was used as the theme song for the defunct PBS show Newton's Apple
Newton's Apple
Newton's Apple is an educational television program distributed to PBS stations in the United States that ran for fifteen seasons from 1983 to 1998. Targeted at younger viewers, it was highly regarded...

in the United States. It was used without permission. Later episodes of the show feature an unknown cover version of the song.

Track listing

Side one
  1. "Ruckzuck" – 7:47
  2. "Stratovarius" – 12:10


Side two
  1. "Megaherz" – 9:30
  2. "Vom Himmel Hoch" – 10:12

Credits

  • Ralf Hütter
    Ralf Hütter
    Ralf Hütter is the lead singer, keyboardist, and reportedly leader of the electronic-music band Kraftwerk. Since the departure of Florian Schneider in 2008, he is also the group's sole remaining founding member....

     – organ, tubon; cover design
  • Florian Schneider-Esleben
    Florian Schneider
    Florian Schneider-Esleben is one of the founding members of electronic music band Kraftwerk. He left the band in November 2008.-Career:...

     – flute, violin, percussion
  • Andreas Hohmann – drums on "Ruckzuck" and "Stratovarius"
  • Klaus Dinger
    Klaus Dinger
    Klaus Dinger was a German musician and songwriter most famous for his contributions to the seminal krautrock outfit, Neu! He was also the guitarist and chief songwriter of new wave group La Düsseldorf and briefly the percussionist of Kraftwerk.-Pre-Neu! :Klaus Dinger was born in Scherfede,...

     – drums on "Von Himmel Hoch"
  • Konrad "Conny" Plank
    Conny Plank
    Konrad "Conny" Plank was a German record producer and musician. He was born in Hütschenhausen. His creativity as a sound engineer and producer helped to shape some of the most important and innovative recordings of postwar European popular music, covering a wide range of genres including...

     – sound engineer & production
  • Klaus Löhmer – assistant sound engineer
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