The earliest Kraftwerk records weren't exactly made in a void—-Kraftwerk and Kraftwerk 2 bear some obvious rock hallmarks that depreciated significantly as their career unfolded. Those albums are loosely connected to similarly minded experimentalists in the then-burgeoning krautrock scene, who were, like Kraftwerk, enamored with the nihilistic proto-punk of the Stooges and the MC5. That those two bands hailed from Detroit, a city that toiled away to the ingrained rhythms of industrial machinery from the then-thriving auto industry, was telling. The march to work, soundtracked by the precision-tooled cadence of pistons and parts being methodically slotted into place, has often been summoned up as a common metaphorical motif to describe Kraftwerk's steely stomp through music history. Read full article here.
