Kraftwerk in 3D

Bringing together music and performance art, the band’s 3D concerts are being labelled as ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ — ‘a total work of art’.

Formed in 1969 by Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider, the band was influenced by the experimental and electronic sounds of Stockhausen and Tangerine Dream, and they based themselves at Conny Plank’s studio in Munich and began to create their unique brand of music.

In 1974, they had their international breakthrough with the album Autobahn, the first side of which was a 22-minute musical journey along German roads.

The album got to number four in the album charts, while a five-minute edit reached number 11 in the singles chart.

Other albums followed: Radioactivity, The Man-Machine, Computer Word and Trans-Europe Express among them.

Singles included the chart-topping double-A side Computer Love/The Model, and Tour De France was a hit in 1983, 1999 and in a remixed form in 2003.

Always at the forefront of electronic experimentation, they extended their style to their stage back-drops with computer generated images.

The band has always been reclusive, very rarely giving interviews and the ones they do take part in are always enigmatic.

The band’s photos always portray the members as robotic (the archetypical ‘man-machine’) and sometimes the photo-shoots are of mannequins.

The band’s 3D multi-media concert tour has been critically acclaimed worldwide, and the show is now coming to the UK, after being performed throughout the US and Europe, as well as South America.

Hutter still leads the band, and his fellow musicians: Henning Schmitz, Fritz Hilpert and Falk Grieffenhagen, will be performing selected works from the band’s repertoire.

This massively influential band has received many accolades over the years; and Hutter and Schneider were honoured with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014.

The concerts will prove to be a feast for both ear and eye.

Kraftwerk will be bringing their innovative show to Sheffield’s City Hall on Thursday June 15.

Tickets are available from the box office and all the usual agencies.