We're living in the future that Kraftwerk hypothesized and synthesized on 1981's Computer World. On that classic album, the German electronic-music pioneers postulated a populace enraptured and awestruck by computers and their life-enhancing and potentially utopian applications. Somehow they didn't foresee internet trolls and groan-inducing click-bait headlines, but no matter. Do you create music on a synthesizer or a computer? You should probably thank Kraftwerk.

Kraftwerk have always been avant-garde... until they weren't—around the time of 1986's Electric Cafe (later retitled Techno Pop). But from 1970 to 1983, Ralf Hütter, Florian Schneider, and myriad comrades had one of the most torrid hot streaks in music history. Their first four albums—including 1969's Tone Float, recorded as Organisation—mapped out a freaky jam aesthetic that scanned more as psychedelic rock and free jazz than the later rhythmically precise and melodically grandiloquent approach of their post-Autobahn output. Bafflingly, Kraftwerk rarely acknowledge those early works, which, while not as influential as their 1974 to 1983 output, contain some of history's most adventurous and unhinged music. Listen to Kraftwerk: It sounds like a new, unprecedented universe being born...

KEEP READING and get info on tomorrow's Paramount show! > > >