Florian Schneider has passed away. The founder member of Kraftwerk died on April 30th but in suitably enigmatic style, the news of his passing is just filtering out, almost a week later. I can't help but feel a little sad that I didn't get to see Schneider in the flesh while he was with Kraftwerk - he had left the group a decade (or more perhaps) before I saw them in concert in 2018 (where I stood only a few feet away from where Ralf Hütter was stationed). Reflecting on Schneider's death this morning, I'm still not sure what he did in the group. There was of course Florian's distinctive flute playing which gave those early pre-Autobahn Kraftwerk albums a tremendous color and mood, but for a breakdown in the division of labor at Kling Klang, I shall have to consult David Buckley's excellent 2012 book Kraftwerk: Publikation. As the 70's wore on, Kraftwerk became less a four-man group and more a single collective. The last time the members displayed any kind of visual identity on their albums was in the elegant group photo from Trans-Europe Express. The following year the Man-Machine artwork presented the four members styled and dressed as clones, while subsequent albums would display the group as robots. It was an image that no doubt suited Schneider. While Ralf Hütter lent a human voice to the group with his dispassionate vocal style, Florian preferred to cloak his voice with vocoders and other devices. On the rare occasions when he offered an interview he was tight-lipped and gave little away (and not without some humor it must be said). And yet it must have pleased him when David Bowie, returning the name check on Trans-Europe Express' title track, named the "Heroes" semi-instrumental V-2 Schneider in his honour.
Before he departed the group, Florian could claim he was Kraftwerk's longest serving member, and he steered the group through at least two organisational crises - early on in the group's history, when his partner Ralf Hütter took leave for university, and later in 1982 when Hütter was seriously injured in a cycling accident that left his continuing participation in the group in doubt. When Florian left the group in 2008 or so, it seemed like Kraftwerk has powered down for good, but the group continued on with retrospective tours and the 3D Catalogue concerts. When I saw Kraftwerk in 2018, it seemed more like a multi-media event than a traditional live show. Ralf Hütter duly sang his vocals but the music I suspect was pre-recorded. In a sense, this kind of automation has future-proofed Kraftwerk from the rigors of psychical deterioration and death. Perhaps, there will a time, after Ralf Hütter has ceased activity that a highly sophisticated Kraftwerk machine will tour and perform across the world thus fulfilling Ralf and Florian's dream of Kraftwerk robots performing on stage in their place while they worked on music in Düsseldorf.
Before he departed the group, Florian could claim he was Kraftwerk's longest serving member, and he steered the group through at least two organisational crises - early on in the group's history, when his partner Ralf Hütter took leave for university, and later in 1982 when Hütter was seriously injured in a cycling accident that left his continuing participation in the group in doubt. When Florian left the group in 2008 or so, it seemed like Kraftwerk has powered down for good, but the group continued on with retrospective tours and the 3D Catalogue concerts. When I saw Kraftwerk in 2018, it seemed more like a multi-media event than a traditional live show. Ralf Hütter duly sang his vocals but the music I suspect was pre-recorded. In a sense, this kind of automation has future-proofed Kraftwerk from the rigors of psychical deterioration and death. Perhaps, there will a time, after Ralf Hütter has ceased activity that a highly sophisticated Kraftwerk machine will tour and perform across the world thus fulfilling Ralf and Florian's dream of Kraftwerk robots performing on stage in their place while they worked on music in Düsseldorf.
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