Kraftwerk at Midland Theatre, Kansas City MO (2025-03-31)

KRAFTWERK TOUR DATES

All aboard to celebrate five decades plus of the Autobahn!

The legendary Rock and Rock Hall of Fame-inducted electronic pioneering foursome from Dusseldorf, Kraftwerk has returned to North America to commemorate 50+ years of their seminal fourth full-length album, “Autobahn” (and its resulting first US Tour) with a maximum audio-visual experience that compliments their trademark minimal but very influential music.

“Autobahn” spawned a popular title single of the same name (whittled down from its 23-minute album version), and was also responsible for expanding the group from the original two (Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider) to the four-piece that we are familiar with today. The album was initially released in 1974 (back when there was an East and a West Germany) and peaked on the Billboard Album chart at an impressive #5 and was many US fans’ first intro to the group. A remastered edition of the record was released in 2009 (the year after we first saw them live in Minnesota, which was one of only three shows played on their way to Coachella in 2008).

A countdown accompanied by a robot voice prefaced the beginning of the two-hour seated show seguing into the set-opening “Numbers/ Computer World” medley, with numbers flashing across the massive rear screen and simple counting vocals in English and German as an on-screen spaceship landed navigated the Earth to land right outside the venue.

The quartet (Hütter and veteran efx/keyboardist Henning Schmitz, along with newest members Falk Grieffenhagen and Georg Bongartz) were all dressed in identical illuminated Tron-like jumpsuits, each standing mostly motionless in front of their individual console.

Their concerts are truly a “Gesamtkunstwerk – a total work of art”; melding hypnotic electronic soundscapes, effects, and percussion, with transformative graphics, lighting, and overall staging for an immersive experience, that is art on many levels, and a sound that was anticipating of the current digital age we all live in.

Who needs Blue Origin or SpaceX when Kraftwerk can take you into space virtually, as they did with the screen images during 1978’s “Spacelab.” That same album’s title track, “The Man-Machine” featured stark red, black and silver images of proletariat-type workers set to the rhythm of booming electronic drumbeats.

Midway through the set came “Autobahn” as we virtually boarded a vintage Mercedes-Benz and set out on the busy German highways in this shortened version of the song. Another big hit, “Computer Love” would be next (the song Coldplay sampled on their single, “Talk”) with the pink screen images showing digital font words and simple drawings of the earliest desktop computers.

“The Model” showcased vintage black and white clips of women parading back and forth in lavish dresses, and the one-two of “Geiger Counter” and “Radioactivity” was perhaps the most politically impactful of the evening. They lyrically brought attention to the potential dangers of radiation and nuclear power and called out the global locations of related accidents and plant leaks- “Fukushima”, “Harrisburg”, “Sellafield” and “Chernobyl” among others.

Journey songs like their “Tour de France” suite and “Trans Europa Express” (as well as “Autobahn”) are real reminders that they are a great soundtrack for driving or traveling in general, and though we didn’t get the group’s ‘mannequin replacements’ dropped in on “The Robots” (like we saw back in ‘08), we did see them appear on-screen, as the terse vocoder vocals guided the song.

Electronic percussion (compliments of primarily Grieffenhagen) increased in intensity as the set progressed, particularly on the low end, with the electro bass literally shaking the almost hundred-year-old walls and rattling the candle wall lighting sconces with every beat.

The set’s final songs and medleys were mostly drawn from the 80’s with the more danceable “Planet of Visions” and “Boing Boom Tschak / Techno Pop / Musique Non Stop” set against spinning geometrically rendered computer head images of the band members. And then, slowly and one-by-one, each member took leave of their console to pause, bow, and wave at side stage, before respectfully disappearing into the backstage darkness, with founding member Hütter being the last to leave, and to the most applause.

With computers in our daily lives and the advent of real Artifical Intelligence in place and evolving constantly, it seems more appropriate than ever to have Kraftwerk as a soundscape soundtrack to our times. Here’s to another fifty years of virtually cruising down the Autobahn with them! Prost!

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