Technopop / Electric Cafe
The "Technopop" album was produced between 1982 and 1986. The original title "Technopop" was changed to "Electric Cafe". This was a spontaneous decision during the final mixing sessions in 1986, as it was the last title they had been working on. This was the period of transition. The music was generated, recorded and mixed on analog and digital equipment and transfered to the digital master. It was the first Kraftwerk album in CD format. The tracks "Boing Boom Tschak", "Technopop" and "Musique Non Stop" formed a sequence of tracks, an idea that would be used a lot in the DJ culture mixing technique. The use of samplers made the treatment of voices more sophisticated, incorporating them into the rhythm and melody at the same time. “Boing Boom Tschak” is in fact pure sound-poetry and electronic-funk, followed by the synthetic voices and sound-collages of "Music Non Stop". The mix of this album was done by Francois Kevorkian in New York.
The changes did not only occur in terms of digital sound, Kraftwerk also digitized their own images. The cover of "Technopop" showed the digitized faces in computer graphics, developed at the New York Institute of Technology. The video of "Music Non Stop"is a tremendous example of virtual modeling and was created by Rebecca Allen and the team of NYIT Computer Graphics Laboratory. The pioneering work of developing these 3-D computer animations took more than two years to be completed.
Analog to Digital
At the end of the year 1986 and after the release of the “Technopop” album Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider made a decicision for the next digital phase of Kraftwerk. This was started with the experience of sound-engineer Fritz Hilpert. The first step was the total redesign of the Kling Klang Studio regarding all the technical and acoustical setups. The next step was to transfer the analog sounds of all the previous recordings to digital standard to make them available as Kling Klang Music Data Files for the future. This enormous work of studio construction and converting the original sounds from the old analog Kling Klang Studio multitrack-tapes to digital format was a very time-consuming process in those days.
The Mix
"The Mix" is a new Kling Klang Studio studio live album which was released 1991. With the new tapeless studio Kraftwerk worked on this product. An album where they used the original Musik Data Files remixed with new sound material on all the tracks such as "The Robots", "Radioactivity" or "Homecomputer". New beats and electronic sounds were created, without losing the spirit of the compositions.
Kraftwerk updated their material with new mixing techniques, ("The studio is our instrument"). The way in which they used these techniques in the studio and on stage, mixing sampled elements and sequenced synthesizers in real time with human and synthetic voices, was in fact very similar to what is known today as "Live-PA" in the DJ culture.
Kraftwerk launched a big tour in 1991 with a series of very successful concerts all across Europe. They brought their new digital Kling Klang Studio setup on stage. All these sound machines were being operated by Ralf Hütter, Florian Schneider, Fritz Hilpert and Henning Schmitz, who had already worked with Kraftwerk as a sound engineer on "The Man Machine" and "Technopop" albums. One of the highlights of the shows were the four remote-controlled robots, who replaced the musicians. They were Kraftwerk lookalikes moving to the rhythm of the music in a kind of mechanical ballet with impressive light effects. Synchronized video images and midi controlled computer graphics were projected on four screens. With this new multimedia performance Kraftwerk had placed their feet in the Nineties.
During the following years they supported Greenpeace at the "Stop Sellafield" concert, and participated in the "Ars Electronica" festival with the Balanescu Quartet and appeared at the "KlangArt" festival. In 1992 Kraftwerk composed the title track for the “MTV - Music Non Stop" show. Kraftwerk made a surprise live appearance at the legendary Tribal Gathering 1997 in Luton Hoo, England. They were wearing synthetic wireframe suits using ultraviolet lights. With this futuristic look and the spectacular visuals they were welcomed back by the worldwide techno music scene.
In 1998 they went to Japan, United States, Europe, and for the first time in their history, played in South America, with concerts in Brazil and Argentina. The concerts in Brazil took place in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, as part of the Free Jazz Festival. These were the last shows that had the impressive structure of the Kling Klang Studio on stage, a trademark of the group's shows since 1981, the technology being constantly upgraded and modified. The producer Pena Schmidt, who brought the group to Brazil in 1998, gave his impressions of the structure: "Their stage, after it was set up, looked like a NASA laboratory. I'm sure that, as the years pass, this stage will be considered a form of 20th century art".
Quelle:
http://web.archive.org/web/20120627170637/http://www.elektrodaten.com/
...)
