Krafwerk plays the Electric Factory on October 2nd. Tickets go on sale Friday at 10 am. Here’s the official press release:
Upon their return to North America this September and October for a special 12 city run of their Multimedia 3-D CONCERTS, electro pioneers KRAFTWERK will be stopping in Philadelphia, PA on October 2 at the Electric Factory. Tickets go on sale this Friday, May 8 at 10:00 am. Bringing together music and performance art, KRAFTWERK 3-D CONCERTS are a true “Gesamtkunstwerk – a total work of art.” On their first turn through the U.S. last year, they got rave reviews:
• Randall Roberts of the Los Angeles Times reported from KRAFTWERK’s performance of their concert series THE CATALOGUE – 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 at the Disney Concert Hall (3/19/14), “Among the highlights were the clean lines and tones of ‘Autobahn,’ a meandering celebration of the open road. As Kraftwerk pumped out plasticine rhythms and warm, humming tones, the 3-D screen above took to the open road, and we virtually rode down the Autobahn as imagined on the album’s iconic cover. ”
• Added Jon Pareles of the New York Times (4/2/14) of the NYC United Palace Theatre show: “Kraftwerk has billed itself as “the man-machine,” and its songs are equally enthralled and
wary of the emotionless precision and pervasive reach of computers, media, high-speed transportation and other inventions with unintended consequences. “Business, Numbers, Money, People,” flashed in midair in “Computer World,” a song released in 1981 that was tersely prescient about big data and surveillance.
• Wrote Robert Altman of Consequence of Sound (4/1/14) of the NYC United Palace Theatre show, “Tonight’s show was billed as a 3D experience, hence the paper glasses handed out upon entry. …Kraftwerk have always been a blend of the cutting edge and the handmade. So, the 8-bit aesthetic in our 64-bit world was in keeping with both their heritage and style.”
The Kraftwerk project was started in 1970 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. They set up their electronic Kling Klang Studio in Düsseldorf, Germany, where they conceived and produced all Kraftwerk albums. By the mid 1970’s Kraftwerk had achieved international recognition for their revolutionary electronic ‘sound scapes’ and their musical experimentation with robots and computers. With their visions of the future, Kraftwerk created the soundtrack for the digital age of the 21st century.
Their compositions, using innovative techniques, synthetic voices and computerised rhythms, were a major international influence across an entire range of music genres: from Electro to Hip Hop, from Techno to SynthPop. In their live performances, Kraftwerk – Ralf Hütter, Henning Schmitz, Fritz Hilpert, Falk Grieffenhagen–illustrate their belief in the cooperation of both men and machine.
With the retrospective of THE CATALOGUE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2012, Kraftwerk have returned full circle to their origins within the Düsseldorf art scene of the late Sixties. The 3-D concert series at MoMA was followed by further presentations at Tate Modern Turbine Hall (London), Akasaka Blitz (Tokyo) Opera House (Sydney), Walt Disney Concert Hall (Los Angeles), Louis Vuitton Fondation (Paris) and Neue National Galerie (Berlin).
At the Los Angeles ceremony in 2014 Ralf Hütter was honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.