These are stills from a film which appears to have been originally shot for a program called Youth Carousel in the winter of 1970. A title screen in the film identifies it as the earliest existing footage of Kraftwerk, and states that the concert took place in Soest, Germany. The original duo of Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter are here joined by drummer Klaus Dinger, who would later, along with Michael Rother, almost take over Kraftwerk, then leave to form Neu! The film is now part of the archives of the German TV show, Rockpalast.
“We play the machines but the machines also play us…We try to treat them as colleagues so they exchange energies with us.”
Ralf Hütter, Kraftwerk
"God knows where Ralf and Florian were at during (the recording of their) first LP. They constructed grooves out of labored bricklayer riffs which truly have no groove at all. It's so tight-assed you want to prise it apart with a hammer. (The album) opens with the monster Krautrock epic 'Ruckzuck'....A big foul atonal organ comes in, followed by spacey Moog synthesizer, then the whole song speeds up, not gradually, but out of nowhere...Wild farty music that slips into ambience only to wrench off your scrotum the next moment. A synth-bass comes in, the whole thing picks up speed and it's the Stooges at Toys R Us. Neu! and the Muppets join in and it's Truly a classic record."
Julian Cope, describing the music being played in the film above, in his book Krautrocksampler
"Sound as texture, rather than sound as music. Producing noise records seems pretty logical to me. My favourite group is a German band called Kraftwerk – it plays noise music to 'increase productivity.' I like that idea, if you have to play music."
David Bowie, 1976
"The big one for me was Radio-Activity. I would go to sleep at night listening to 'Geiger Counter'."
Iggy Pop, on his introduction to Kraftwerk, in 1976
“I see us as the musical Bauhaus. In their time, they could work in theater, architecture, photography and short films but they did not really have the technology to apply their ideas to music. We now have it. We see ourselves as studio technicians or musical workers, not as musical artists.”
Ralf Hütter, NME, 1980
Conceptually, Kraftwerk were as prophetic as Orwell; musically, they helped jump-start hip-hop with an electro shock and set the stage for techno, especially after Afrika Bambaataa borrowed the melody of "Trans-Europe Express" for his 1982 smash, "Planet Rock." One of their inheritors, techno king Carl Craig, probably said it best: "They were so stiff they were funky."
Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 2002