May 2004 - Kraftwerk - mailman.xmission.com

Happy birthday!
by Der Automat 31 May '04

31 May '04

Today is Karl Bartos (52, born in Berchtesgaden) and Fritz Hilpert (48) birthdays. DER AUTOMAT

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Kraftwerk @ Arvika Festival
by mac the bastard 25 May '04

25 May '04

http://www.releasemagazine.net: The Arvika Festival just gave us their latest booking: Kraftwerk. This is a dream come true for the organisers, who also have been more than pleased with another 2004 headliner, Skinny Puppy. Furthermore, Auf der Maur, Alice in Videoland and the new Eddie Bengtsson project This Fish Needs a Bike will join the line-up in July. Karl Bartos, who usually plays a number of Kraftwerk pieces live, has cancelled his Arvika show. According to a recent interview with Ralf HÃ¼tter in Italian newspaper La Stampa (quoted by kraftwerk.technopop.com.br), the remastered Kraftwerk album re-issues are scheduled for September. "Autobahn", "Radioactivity", "Trans Europe Express", "The Man Machine", "Computer World", "Electric CafÃ©" , "The Mix" and "Tour de France Soundtracks" will be available, both as separate items and in a box. They will be released on both vinyl and CD, and later on, also as Super Audio CD. No unreleased material will see the light of day, but some known bonus tracks will be included. One interesting detail is that "Electric CafÃ©" will be named with its original title "Techno Pop", and feature artwork from the original project as well. The three first Kraftwerk records "Kraftwerk", "Kraftwerk 2" and "Ralf & Florian" will also be re-issued later (for the first time on CD). In further news, a live DVD from the tour of 2004 is in production, and will be out next year, if the information we have is correct. /Mikael Kahrle, Johan Carlsson

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automated response
by Martin Olson 24 May '04

24 May '04

Due to illness I will be out of the office until at least next Friday, May the 28th. In the meanwhile, please contact Steve Grushcow at 212-691-1134 with any questions. Thanks, Martin

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Kraftwerkdelux
by Der Automat 24 May '04

24 May '04

A brief review (and two very nice photos) of the Kraftwerk's concert in Madrid was published into this month Spanish music magazine Rockdelux. http://www.rockdelux.es DER AUTOMAT

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RE: Kraftwerk at Benicassim festival - Spain
by Der Automat 24 May '04

24 May '04

As Kraftwerk will be playing at the Benicassim International Festival this year, they will be included in the DVD + 2CD to be published after the festival. http://www.fiberfib.com http://english.fiberfib.com/ DER AUTOMAT

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Re: [Kraftwerk] KW in Turin
by Enrique Correa 24 May '04

24 May '04

Luca, Thanks for the review! [...] > 4) Until you've seen it, you can't believe how beautifully > synchronized audio and video are. Actually, KW are playing > a sort of "soundtrack" (sounds familiar?) to the videos. They're > (especially Ralf) actually "playing" more than I expected - lots > of twiddling with his knobs/sliders/keyboard. They were > definitely enjoying themselves. Agree 100% and how about the guy (what's his name?) to Ralf's left? He definitely grooved! For what I could tell he was in charge of the Earth shaking basses and punches. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the impression he gave me, specially when he bent his knees everytime he keyed an out of this world bass (i.e.: at Aerodynamik). His serious and rigid facial expression (judging by the pics I took that night) don't truly reflect how actively he participated. He was really engaged throughout the concert. Can anyone tell me his name, please?? > 6) They had no interaction with the audience, although I managed > to see a hint of a smile on Ralf's face while he was singing > "Minicalcolatore". Florian smiled only at the end of the concert, > while giving his usual exaggerated bow. Ralf politely gave us a > "Gute Nacht/Goodnight/Buona notte". All we've got from him that Coachella night was a "Good night, Aufidersen" (sp?) One thing I noticed right before they left their workstations, during Music Non-Stop, was how disciplined and meticulous they were about gathering their belongings (cartridges, headphones, etc). I guess they don't want to leave that job up to nobody. Who can blame them? > A couple of not-so-positive notes: > 1) The "dancing robots" interlude (I never liked it) now appears a tad > boring. BTW one of the robots was not moving while the other ones > need heavy strobo-lighting just to give some impression of movement. > IMHO the only outdated and slightly boring part of the show. Althought > the robots are part of KW heritage, they should in my opinion either > drop them or replace them with something more effective. I respectfully disagree. I loved the robots. Even today, when I listen to that song live, I get goosebumps. The crowd reaction is usually LOUD. Go figure, thousandths of people cheering at some lifeless pieces of machinery. Well, sort of lifeless... each of them had a pretty dark beard on their faces! Have you noticed that? (I send you pics if you want) Enrique

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Interesting interview
by Luca Dassi 21 May '04

21 May '04

A review of the Turin concert along with an interview with Ralf appeared in yesterday's "La Stampa" newspaper: http://www.lastampa.it/search/albicerca/ng_articolo.asp?IDarticolo=978242&se zione=Spettacoli For those of you who don't understand Italian, a loose translation of the most interesting parts: "Ralf Hütter is unusually communicative....." <We were aware that Europe was an only community since we published T.E.E.> "What changed in Kraftwerk? " <During 1998, we realized we had reached a limit. We still had analogue instruments that were bulky and expensive to carry around. Now we have four laptop computers that don't need tuning and give us a good flexibility> "Setlist is always the same" <We chose these tracks because they best represent us today. Concerts are all different anyway, we have room for improvisation, tracks are remixed live each night> "Do the audience and the venue matter?" <When we play at a festival our sound is more aggressive, in a small club it becomes more intimate, it's a matter of vibrations and with our current instruments we can follow freely and quickly the reaction of the audience.> "Unreleased tracks?" <No. "Planet of Vision" is a reworking of "Expo 2000", with a new mix and contributions from fellow musicians from Detroit. It's very far from the original> "You are planning to re-release your catalogue" <We remastered the original tapes and included all the artwork we wanted to have on our albums when they were first published. From September on, our 8 albums will be published in CD and vinyl, and later in Super Audio CD, in both English and German versions. There will not be unreleased tracks, we used the same approach as we were restoring a movie. Maybe there will be a live album, we're also thinking about a limited edition box with a picture book> "Do Kraftwerk have a political vision of the world?" <Believing in the progress of man and machine is in itself a political vision. To testify that this is a viable option we played in 1992 for Greenpeace" "What is the most utterly German tract of Hütter and Schneider?" <A work ethic - that is not only German, but Mitteleuropean - based on order and commitment, the same ethic that gave success to Volkswagen. And a certain black humour, that unfortunately not everyone is able to grasp.>. Peace, Luca

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Coachella LIVE recording (was: RE: [Kraftwerk] Kraftwerk "At the Cirkus" 2-CD)
by Enrique Correa 20 May '04

20 May '04

Gang, FYI, The link to the May 1st Coachella recording first appeared on the excellent sharingthegroove.org website. Then, someone posted that BitTorrent link on the Coachella message board site (that's when I found out about it) on May 9th. They were FLAC files and some people complained about that fact. A day later, a member from the Coachella message board, did something he was not supposed to (as a rule, sharing the groove asks their members not to sell the audio files nor to convert them to MP3's) and re-encoded all the files to MP3's and posted them on his hushreality link. At the Sahara tent, at the concert itself, I was only a few meters away from boldcaptian, the guy who recorded this (he had a big hat on him, a hat that he would not take off under no circumstances, if you know what I mean). Yes, the recording quality is the best one I've ever heard and if you burn it without gaps, it'll fit on one 80 min CD just right. I've already traded this CD-R with a few from this very list, along with a CD-R including pics from the concert. If you are up to the challenge of dealing with an even bigger file (~850 Mb BitTorrent), I recommend also for you to search for the Toronto Ricoh concert in Canada, April 2004. Search for Kraftwerk on sharingthegroove.org and you'll see it. Great quality recording as well. That recording has a lot more songs in it. Please don't convert it to MP3, nor sell bootlegs from it. Thanks, E a.k.a. gaucho_pop

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Re: [Kraftwerk] Kraftwerk "At the Cirkus" 2-CD
by tomas johansson 19 May '04

19 May '04

Vilken affär? Undrar ZZZZZZ http://www.zzzzzz.nu <-----Original Message-----> From: henrik.olsson(a)equant.com Sent: 5/6/2004 3:07:55 PM To: Kraftwerk(a)mailman.xmission.com Subject: [Kraftwerk] Kraftwerk "At the Cirkus" 2-CD I just picked up a copy of Kraftwerk "At the Cirkus" 2-CD (from the Stockholm concert February 10) in a record shop in Stockholm today. Very good audio quality, sleeve with nice fotos, scanned (but manipulated) tickets, etc, linear notes. //H.

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Trade
by Alex Brega 19 May '04

19 May '04

I have a couple of Tour programs to swap with other KW material. Alex nicolabrega(a)libero.it _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

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