Considered by many to be the godfathers of electronic music for their ’70s synth rhythms and melodies, German electro-pop outfit Kraftwerk still makes an impact more than 30 years later. “We’re charging our battery,” sang Ralf Hütter last night at the Museum of Modern Artduring the show’s first song, “The Robots.” “And now we’re full of energy.”
Last night was the kick-off of “Retrospective 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8,” a marathon eight-show performance series at MoMA. The premise: each night Kraftwerk is to perform one of eight albums from the past four decades, in chronological order, to a group of 450 concertgoers in MoMA’s atrium. Fans immediately took to the idea, with all eight shows selling out in a frenzied two hours on February 22, and the $25 tickets reselling on Craigslist for upwards of $500. The focus of the first concert was “Autobahn,” Kraftwerk’s seminal 1974 album, which the band began to perform in its entirety, after opening with the 1978 song “The Robots.” The album’s 22-minute title track, which sounds like it could have come out of the last decade, took the crowd on a ride through a virtual autobahn filled with Volkswagen Beetles and Mercedes-Benzes, thanks to the 3-D glasses that were handed out before the performance.
For images from the performance and the full article please visit Art Info.