{"id":34202,"date":"2022-08-03T12:16:50","date_gmt":"2022-08-03T12:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/karl-bartos-kraftwerk-turned-into-the-dehumanisation-of-music-music\/"},"modified":"2022-08-03T12:16:50","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T12:16:50","slug":"karl-bartos-kraftwerk-turned-into-the-dehumanisation-of-music-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/karl-bartos-kraftwerk-turned-into-the-dehumanisation-of-music-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Karl Bartos: ‘Kraftwerk turned into the dehumanisation of music’ | music"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When a teenage Karl Bartos told his parents that he wanted to dedicate his life to music, his father was so furious that he kicked his son’s acoustic guitar to pieces.<\/p>\n

After hearing the Beatles at 12, something had awakened in him \u2013 \u201cI wanted to feel like how they sounded,\u201d he says \u2013 and so he persisted past that smashed guitar. Tripping on LSD listening to Hendrix was another portal. \u201cThe music spoke to me in all the world’s languages \u200b\u200bat once,\u201d he recalls in his memoir. \u201cI understood its message down to the very last frequency. Never before had the essence of music been as clear.\u201d<\/p>\n

The memoir, The Sound of the Machine: My Life in Kraftwerk and Beyond, is an incredibly detailed book about Bartos’s life: from those pivotal childhood moments, years spent at the Robert Schumann Conservatory in Dusseldorf where he studied percussion, through to his time in what is considered the classic Kraftwerk line-up \u2013 Bartos, Ralf H\u00fctter, Florian Schneider, Wolfgang Fl\u00fcr \u2013 in which he played from 1974 until 1990.<\/p>\n

Kraftwerk were looking for a percussionist for some live dates and Bartos was recommended by his professor. Being summoned to their infamous and secretive Kling Klang Studio, he immediately clicked with H\u00fctter and Schneider. \u201cWe were attracted to each other and it just felt pure,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI knew from the first meeting it was something very special.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/svg><\/span>Kraftwerk performing in Brussels in 1981. LR:
Ralf H\u00fctter, Karl Bartos, Wolfgang Fl\u00fcr, Florian Schneider.<\/span> Photograph: Gie Knaeps\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bartos joining coincided with the release of Autobahn, a record \u2013 specifically its title track \u2013 often considered a benchmark for modernity in pop music, with its pulsing groove stretching out into the future. Work soon commenced on concept album Radio-Activity, and Bartos became more of an embedded member, contributor and co-writer. The subsequent albums Trans-Europe Express, The Man-Machine and Computer World (1977-1981) are an immaculate, peerless run of records that shimmer and glisten with metallic sparkle; equal parts meticulous pop and futuristic sci-fi soundscapes, they became the blueprint for electronic pop in the ensuing decade. Bartos says Kraftwerk’s mission was to invest technology with humanity, to make it \u201cfeel-able and visible \u2013 and this was different to all the electronic pop music which was inspired by us. they just treated the electronic equipment like a guitar; they just played songs in the tradition of English pop music. But Kraftwerk remained different because we wanted to make aware of technique.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not only were the band climbing consistent creative peaks in the studio but their dynamic was at its most friendly and sociable. Some were living together in a place that housed what Bartos describes as \u201clegendary parties\u201d, though he won’t be drawn on juicy details. For those we must instead turn to Fl\u00fcr’s memoir I Was A Robot. \u201cA Super 8 projector would be playing sex films on to the wall next to the bathtub,\u201d he wrote. \u201cEverything would be covered in bubble bath and red wine, and candlelight would dimly illuminate the sweaty scene. These parties were like Sodom and Gomorrah.\u201d It seems at odds with such a mysterious and secretive band who were experimenting with using robot aliases \u2013 and Bartos’s book plays to type by focusing intensely on working methods, creative process and technology.<\/p>\n

In 1981 they successfully toured \u2013 despite their equipment weighing seven tons \u2013 and had a UK No 1 the next year with The Model. They were at their creative and commercial zenith, with Bartos writing that Computer World \u201cwas our most successful attempt at translating the dialect of the man-machine metaphor into music\u201d, but Kraftwerk wouldn’t perform live for nearly a decade as they disappeared into the studio. \u201cWe slept over the whole 80s,\u201d Bartos says. \u201cIt really was a dramatically huge mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n

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