LIFE SOUNDTRACK Kraftwerk – Die Roboter

Filed Under: Life Soundtrack — By: Oliver Bouchard

I think I heard this song first 1979 in music class. We were asked to bring some cassettes to be played in front of the class and a fellow student brought Kraftwerk’s Die Roboter. The kids back then were divided between classical music (those who learned instruments) and 50s rock’n’roll, so this song was subject to much ridicule. I loved it and I would credit this moment as the start of my fascination for electronic music.

Even back then, Kraftwerk had been around for quite a while, pioneering in electronic music. If you speak German, you will enjoy how the moderator struggles to categorize the music. In the end, he settles for “Electronic Rock Band”, kind of an oxymoron in today’s music genre taxonomy.

The record Die Roboter was on, Die Mensch Maschine also featured also Das Model, which was re-released a couple of years later and became a number one hit in the UK. By then, Kraftwerk was of course already one of the most influential and most sampled bands in music history.

I saw them live only once much later on my birthday in 2005 at the Hammerstein Ballroom.