From cognition Sent Wed, Nov 3rd 1999, 13:20
From cognition Sent Wed, Nov 3rd 1999, 13:20
[please note: i didn't catch the original email; this is a general post and not a reply to be taken "personally" :)] Kraftwerk: regardless of how anyone feels personally about their music, (i find there are two groups of people who *really* love them: the gear people who focus on what they were able to do with what they had, and the music lovers/DJs who are "damn, this twenty year old kraftwerk still sounds as good today as it did when recorded"; played "numbers" on show 593 and it goes head to head with stuff from 18 years later :)) it is impossible to deny their contribution. it's interesting to see how just a *sample* of a certain Kraftwerk song can shape things in the future. for example, Afrika Bambaataa's using the strings from Kraftwerk's Trans Europe Express for Planet Rock (and keep in mind this was done a few years after TEE was recorded, not right away, so it took us in north america a while to catch on to the good thing) and what that track went on to influence; Juan Atkins' hearing Kraftwerk (just a bit) for the first time and suddenly rethinking even the music he had *already recorded* prior to Kraftwerk. And look what Juan Atkins has done. (shit, we can even blame Atkins for Sir Mix A Lot; SMAL's biggest hit, "Baby Got Back", rode the rhythm from Channel One's (Doug Craig, relative of a certain Carl, and Juan Atkins release from 1986 on Atkins' Metroplex) "Technicolor"!) Dan Bell's sampling of Kraftwerk's Numbers for an early DBX track, and look at how DBX and Dan Bell classics have shaped things. I just woke up and that's just three quick examples off the top of my head, there's tons more. I agree that people tend to talk about the same small group of names over and over, and I won't name any names to illustrate this point! ;) (i think it's a human mental laziness thing to do this, not at all something that just happens when talking about music) but there have always been and always will be, unfortunately, acts who constantly get props (deserved and not totally deserved) and those who don't (but who do deserve it). Take Newcleus' track "Jam On It" for example. Listen to the break in that track: just one bar of that break went on to inspire the British bleep sound years later (this time north america doing something that "outside" took a while to catch onto; sorta the reverse of the kraftwerk to bambaataa thing of years previous). Warp built their label on this sound, so you could break it down to Newcleus' "Jam On It" ... Warp Records! (how's that for some IDM-related content, huh? ;) Anyway, you don't hear people talking about "oh, the break in 'Jam On It' indirectly lead to the formation of Warp Records", but we need to think harder to come up with that kind of way of looking at the broader spectrum. Things tend to get broken down into A = B, B = C, therefore A = C. this only works in math, not in music. to use a cliche, there's all sort of things that have gone and continue to go into our giant jambalaya of sound, and kraftwerk was one of the many main ingredients (sorta the musical soup stock :)) speakin' of food, tummy is rumbling, time for some cereal for breakfast :) andrew duke ps THE aTKINS/sir mix a lot tale is told by mike grant in the text interview on cognition (http://techno.ca/cognition) and if you feel like subjecting yourself to more of the mental loopiness runnin' through my brain (in text form :)) there's plenty of commentaries in the same place. little miss trinitron wrote: > > I would say the most over-hyped electronic artist is Kraftwerk, > > but I won't because of the backlash it would generate. > > i think that is a little harsh. you've got to think of what the music world > was like in those days, how much work and inspiration it actually took for > kraftwerk to break through and create what they did. for that alone they > will quite literally always be remembered. and if you take their body of > work simply on its own merit, they are still awesome 20 years later. they > made something very, very difficult sound very easy. autechre etc. have > taken something very easy and made it seem difficult. -- Cognition/Andrew Duke's In The Mix mailto:xxxxxxxxx@xxxxxx.xx http://techno.ca/cognition 1096 Queen St #123 Halifax NS Canada B3H 2R9