Kraftwerk finally back in Brighton after 36 years!

Kraftwerk, Brighton Centre, Brighton 7.6.17.

I have to say that this was nearly the perfect gig, but whatever happened tonight, the godfathers of (a majority of) modern music are still absolutely brilliant.

Right, so now I have got that off my chest, you will note that any negative observations that follow don’t really matter in the manner of things.

Kraftwerk are getting nearer and nearer to their 50th birthday Sgt. Peppers style milestone and are today as relevant as they have been for a majority of their career. It is astonishing to convey to you that this is the very first time that Kraftwerk have ever played a concert at the Brighton Centre. In fact the last two times they have performed in Brighton were way back in 1975 and 1981 and both concerts were held at The Dome.

Their music from between the 1975 and 1981 concerts had dramatically evolved, but quite possibly since 1981, their sound hasn’t really progressed that much. Partly because they were so ahead of the game in the first place and the fact that the personnel has changed since then. The only mainstay being vocalist and founder member Ralf Hütter. Some would argue that in fact these days he is Kraftwerk. I for one wish that somehow they will live on once Ralf has hung up his cycle clips. You know I wouldn’t put it past them.

So onto tonight’s event, note the use of the word event instead of concert, as every Kraftwerk concert is a true event, it is something very special indeed that can’t really be replicated elsewhere.

These four German gentlemen (Ralf Hütter, Henning Schmitz, Fritz Hilpert and Falk Grieffenhagen) and their synthetic sounds are on tour to celebrate the release of their 3-D Catalogue of 8 discs, which in essence are re-workings of their previous 8 albums, starting with the year zero release of Autobahn. There were at least three albums prior to that – Kraftwerk (1970), Kraftwerk 2 (1972) and Ralf Und Florian (1973), but they have conveniently been forgotten in the annals of time. There are different formats available of the new release, but I have purchased the 8 CD version and very fine it is too.

Regarding their recorded output, Kraftwerk are exponents of less is more, having released so few songs during the bands lifetime and although their artwork is striking that is minimalist too. You would really have hunt deep to find any sort of Kraftwerk interview and so to virtually everyone they remain an enigma. This is what keeps the dream going on and on with them and they have now reached near mythical status.

The start of tonight’s concert was delayed 15 minutes due to the strictest security I have ever witnessed at any of my hundreds of concerts. This was obviously mainly off of the back of recent sickening events and also partly due to ensure that all tickets sold were to the fans and not sold onto someone else. As the person that purchased the tickets had to have photo ID and everyone who had a ticket with that person had to go into the venue at the same time. Fans then had to put all of their belongings such as keys, phones, wallets etc into a tray and then be electronically body searched. I for one welcomed this, as it made everyone feel very safe indeed.

When the 135 minute concert did eventually start with Numbers, I have to say that the volume was quite low and a disappointment. It did get louder, but it should have been the correct volume to start with. Maybe the sound-man accidentally left if low from the soundcheck of The Model. Then some time later after the first encore the curtain was not or could not close, which was some great embarrassment. There were also a few uncharacteristic pauses between songs (only up to about 10 seconds) but this is not the norm for Kraftwerk. There could have been one or two other minor hiccups, but there you go, that’s all the negative bits out of the way, oh except they didn’t surprisingly play Pocket Calculator or Showroom Dummies. Right, now I am done.

Prior to entering the arena, everyone was furnished with special Kraftwerk 3-D glasses (a nice souvenir to keep to add to my Kraftwerk collection me thinks) as this indeed was a 3-D performance, just like a cinema film. So if some of the photos look a bit blurry in this article it is because of the 3-D effect.

The first few songs (Numbers/Computer World/It’s More Fun To Compute/Home Computer/Computer Love) were culled from their 1981 Computer World album, which incidentally I can remember purchasing (for only £3.75) at the time, up the road from the Brighton Centre at the sadly defunct Subway Records which was located near the top of West Street. This set the evening up very nicely indeed.

Next up were four tracks from their timeless 1978 Man Machine album, which included the title track and their UK number one single The Model and quite possibly my favourite piece of music by anyone, namely Neon Lights. I have it on the album and also on the legendary (ahead of its time) 12″ luminous vinyl version too. Where at night you hold it up the lounge lights for a minute with your hand held across the grooves and then turn the lights off and voilà, a luminous record lights up the room bar the black hand print – surely I can’t have been the only Kraftwerk fan to have done this?

Next up from the same album was Spacelab, which I have to say had the most enjoyable graphics of the whole evening as it starts as though you are on a Spacelab looking down at the Earth and then in another graphic the Spacelab flies by you in 3-D and you stretch your hand out as you feel that you can actually touch it. Then something new with the graphics as they had added a map of the UK with Brighton marked on it and then they had a photo of the outside of the Brighton Centre with an alien spaceship landing in the road by the entrance, possibly as to indicate that futuristic/alien Kraftwerk has arrived and this flying saucer also performed a flypast of the Royal Pavilion in another graphic. This was truly a unique piece solely created for tonight. I am very lucky as I am also seeing them again on this tour in London and no doubt the graphics will also change for that night.

Next up was the song that cemented my interest in everything synth back in 1974/5 and that would be the decades ahead of its time Autobahn – a song about a car journey on a German motorway. I must admit their roads in their graphics look a lot less busier than ours do today.

Then we were treated to five songs from their 1975 Radio-Activity album, including the title track and what I personally believe to be the most improved track from the new 3-D box-set from the original album release and that is Airwaves. It is so different and improved that my friend asked me which track it was an he is a long term fan too.

Now we were treated to Electric Café from the Techno Pop album and then four tracks from their 2003 Tour de France Soundtracks platter.

I have to say that tonight, these songs had not dated at all and quite possibly sounded the best of the whole evening. Now that’s something I didn’t think I was going to say before the gig.

Three joined compositions from the 1977 Trans-Europe Express release were up next. The title track (along with Numbers from 1981) totally inspired the whole hip-hop movement back in the day. So music knows no boundaries, from Düsseldorf to The Bronx, amazing really.

The first encore was The Robots culled from The Man-Machine album, whereby the band do not appear on stage, just their doppelgänger robots instead. We Kraftwerk fans love this, where the curtain opens and the robots are standing there moving their arms to the beat. Then the song finishes and the crowd applause and the curtain shuts. Not tonight though, curtain malfunction – just skip it, no-one noticed.

The Aero-Dynamik single taken from their Tour De France album was performed and then Planet Of Visions which is a re-working of the stupendous EXPO 2000 single. Finally we had the trilogy of Boing Boom Tschak/Techno Pop/ Musique Non Stop from their 1986 Electric Cafe album, now more appropriately re-titled Techno Pop.

The 3-D spectacled crowd had been truly won over and everyone had thought it was an awesome evening. Let’s hope that they return to Brighton in very much less time than our previous 36 year wait!

Tonight’s set-list was: Numbers, Computer World, It’s More Fun To Compute, Home Computer, Computer Love, The Man-Machine, Spacelab, The Model, Neon Lights, Autobahn, Airwaves, Intermission, News, Geiger Counter, Radioactivity, Electric Café, Tour de France, Etape 1, Chrono, Etape 2, Trans-Europe Express, Metal On Metal, Abzug, The Robots, Aero Dynamik, Planet Of Visions, Boing Boom Tschak, Techno Pop, Musique Non Stop

For more information on Kraftwerk try: http://www.kraftwerk.com/ 

If you enjoy synth music like Kraftwerk, then the chances are that you will also enjoy the bands listed below. Simply click on each of the names and they will take you to our concert reviews on those bands:

Fröst, The Human League, Blancmange, The KVB, Digitalis, Battery Operated Orchestra, Halo Maud, Sextile, Gary Numan, Orbital, Pinkshinyultrablast, B-Movie, Covenant, AK/DK, Blue Hawaii, OMD, The Fin., Heaven 17, Austra, Vile Electrodes.