Kraftwerk biography

Our Teutonic heroes resurfaced in 1975 with the album, Radioactivity, a concept album inspired by the theme of radio communication. The first album to be entirely self-produced by Hütter and Schneider in their Kling Klang studio, the album was released in both German and English, a sign of the band's growing popularity.

Train travel was the subject of 1977 album, Trans-Europe Express. Built around the concept of a train moving across a continent that was rapidly becoming borderless, the album opened with the glowing electronic hymn, Europe Endless. The haunting melody of the title track would inspire Afrika Bambaataa to borrow it for his 1982 hit, Planet Rock. By the time of 1978's The Man Machine album, the band had seemingly abandoned any semblance of human instrumental touches. "The machines play us," proclaimed Ralf Hutter. It didn't seem to do their popularity any harm. The album gave the band a UK No.1 with The Model. By now, the band even portrayed themselves as automatons. Journalists invited to the Paris press conference for the launch of the album were greeted by four robots on stage instead of the band themselves. By now the band had become the coolest foursome in pop, their influence had seen Bowie explore minimalist soundscapes on his 1977 albums Low and Heroes and Trans Europe Express had become a staple part of the soundtrack to New York's Studio 54. Their schtick may have been semi ironic, playing on stereotypes of dispassionate Germans, but they were also passionate about reviving German culture. "We are reviving the culture of Mitteleuropa that was cut off in the Thirties," explained Hutter.

At the peak of their powers the band retreated from public view for the next three years until the release of 1981 album, Computer World, which, prophetically, dealt with the rising global dominance of technology within society. Afterwards, the band again took a long hiatus, band member Ralf Hutter had become increasingly obsessed with cycling, sometimes pedalling 200km a day. In 1983 he suffered a bad crash on the bike which fractured his skull, putting him in a coma for two days. When he woke, his first words were: "Where's my bike?"

By the time of release of 1986's middling Electric Cafe album, the band's influence had waned, with several British electro bands such as The Human League, OMD and New Order taking up the digital baton. Kraftwerk lay silent for most of the next decade, a reworked compilation album, The Mix, punctured their silence in 1991. Despite the band being name checked by up and coming electronic acts, the band, or more specifically founder members Hutter and Schneider decided to retreat to their Kling Klang studio and laboriously re-record old tracks by digitally sampling their old analogue music.

In 1997 the band appeared before awestruck ravers at the Tribal Gathering festival, sharing the bill with techno artists like Jeff Mills and Derrick May who were in awe of the Teutonic tunesmiths. The band eventually broke their studio silence, albeit very briefly, with a commission to write the theme tune for Hanover's Expo 2000. But the whole event would become a fiasco to rival that of London's Millennium Dome. Eventually, Kraftwerk came up with a three second jingle with a vocoderised voice singing the phrase: 'Expo 2000.' They were paid £125,000 for their time!

The band eventually recorded something longer lasting with a musical celebration of the centenary of the Tour De France cycle race. The band reworked their 1983 single Tour De France and added a further four versions of it to their 2003 album, Tour De France Soundtracks. While hardly a classic Kraftwerk album it served as a timely reminder of the band's influence on everything from techno and electronica to French house. The band surprised fans by announcing a world tour the same year - a largely triumphant multi-media extravaganza that cemented the band's reputation as Teutonic trailblazers. As techno king Carl Craig once said of the band: "They were so stiff, they were funky!"

• Discography