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Intervju
Frank Reich2 weeks ago
I tried to translate the whole thing from French to English, for non-french speakers who desire to know what Ralf is saying here : ITW - You have launched the "robotism" movement within the music, a movement with a lot of imitators but not so much originators with the most perfect example being "The Man-Machine" album, with songs such as "The Robots". Why did you choose to popularize this esthetic ? Ralf - For us, this is a day to day concrete reality, our existence is robotic. "Rabotnik" in Russian means "worker" and we are "music worker" (musikarbeiter). ITW - Why reject art as a concept ? Ralf - I don't know, because it might be a 19th century conception of the Romantism. For us, it's more like an "industrial productivity". ITW - But we do find a certain form of Romantism in some of your songs, like "Trans-Europe Express" or "Radioactivity". Ralf - Yeah, but it's more like a technological or ecological romantism. ITW - There is no trace of a literary German romantism in your music ? Ralf - No, not exactly. ITW - You spoke about productivity, but there was a quite long interval between the release of "The Man-Machine" and "Computer World" albums. We couldn't say it's stakhanovism, isn'it ? Ralf - Well we work every day and we needed three years to complete the new portable studio. The whole interval between the release of the two albums was spent on building the new design and structure of our studio as a main instrument. We build everything ourselves, the software/hardware, the electrical scheme. Everything is functionnal and custom made for ourselves. We do electronic music and we can't just go in every store asking the vendors "I want this". ITW - "Computer World" seems to be the logical sequel to "The Man-Machine" regarding the themes and the concept because it's about computer and robotism. Ralf - Yes, the penultimate record was about the mixture of the machine with the physics, and now with the new album we explored the relationships between the machine and the mental aspects of the mind. We are all programmed like robots, machines... ITW - Are we all programmed ? Ralf - Yes, of course ! With the genetic codes, with the whole education thing, the social behavior... ITW - So a man can't predetermine his own path, his own existence ? Ralf - Not really, only with little choices, little programing deviations. ITW - How can we measure the minimalism in Kraftwerk ? Ralf - It's mostly about a certain idea of primitivism, like "Autobahn", the things about daily life; things that are no longer in our consciousness but become trivial and are main parts of our daily lifestyles. Those things are just like a robotic rhythm that we capture in order to get more aware of them (?) ITW - The latent "germanism" of your music has been sometimes talked in a pejorative way. Some people highlighted the fact that the music was "too disciplined or strict". Ralf - Yes, it's a part of our education. ITW - But other german bands shared sometimes more sentiments with their melodies ? Ralf - Yes, but it could have been "strict" sentiments... ITW - Don't you feel a bit perverse/wicked to seek for order and purity in a more and more decadent society ? Ralf - I'm not much of a philosopher who could answer all those big questions about life, but what we do with Kraftwerk could be more like, in a way, to seek productivity within the individual itself or within a group in order to build a more constructive future than a decadent society. ITW - Isn't contemporary Germany a symbol of a decadent society, with all these young people like Baader-Meinhof, the Ecologists or the Berlin squatters ? It's also your generation in a way, so what could you say about all of these people ? Ralf - We are surely a part in some ways of an ecologist movement, in order to build a more humane life on our planet; it's our lifestyle. ITW - I know this a very old stereotype, but does men still have a chance against machines today ? Ralf - Yes, of course. Men and machine will live and work in a friendship; that's what we said with "The Man-Machine". Like it said, it's Man-Machine. It's not one against the other or one better than the other but a harmonious way to exist with the other one. It's what we live in our studio, when our ideas and thoughts are translated to music thanks to machines, electronic machines in our case. ITW - You said in a previous interview that Kraftwerk was a musical version of the Bauhaus school of thinking. What are the common points between the Bauhaus and you ? Ralf - It's about daily art. Every art thing is not thought outside of the society, but within society itself as a manufactured piece thought by men. As "musikarbeiters", we do think that creating music is a way to carry ideas and thoughts within the society. ITW - You represent a form of German fatalism, but it seems like quite an optimistic kind of fatalism. Ralf - Yes, certainly. Otherwise, we should stop making music, as a direct consequence to that. ITW - Good news !
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