Kraftwerk 544 Before Joy Division, New Order, Gary Numan, Pet Shop Boys and Depeche Mode, there was Kraftwerk. Even younger bands like Coldplay or Babyshambles quote influences from this act. The gig played by the pioneers of all pioneers of electronica at the Palace Hall in Bucharest was of particular significance for fans of this music genre, 4,000 of them on the location. When it comes to electronica, the Germans do it best. Even today, the appetite for electro is still unquenched in Germany and bands that make this kind of music are hugely popular, more than in many parts of the world. Kraftwerk may not muster the same huge audiences that many of their successors do nowadays, but their music is the stuff of legend when you think they rose to fame by releasing the album "Computerworld” even before PCs came into existence. Moreover, they fathered many of the music styles that exist today: house, techno, electro, ambient music , hip hop. An evening with Kraftwerk, when music and technology act in concert at over 50,000 Watts, is always a surprising experience. “Manmachine” and “Planet of Visions” were the first tracks which whetted the audience’s appetite for what was a one- and- a half- hour retrospective of hits released by the German band in their 40 years of music career. Next came “Vitamin,” ”Autobahn,” “Computerlove,” “Model” and “Neonlights.” Given the scarce amount of vocals and no stage movement, this type of band always runs the risk of having the crowd fall into a comfortable numbness, but there was no time with Kraftwerk. Surely, no one was expecting to hear any words in Romanian during their show, but it did happen when the band adapted the verses of the track “Showroom dummies” into this: “Suntem manechini/Hai sa iesim/Mergem in club/ O sa dansam!” (which would roughly translate as: We are dummies/Let’s go out/We’ll go to a club/We will dance).“Tour de France,” one of their trademark songs, was accompanied by original images from the tour’s first editions projected on a screen of 64 square meters. While it may seem strange to say that one of the peak moments of the concert took place when the artists were not onstage in persona, it just goes to show once more that Kraftwerk are unlike many others. When the crowd summoned them for the first encore, the famous track “Roboter” started and the curtain was drawn, what they saw was that four life-size robots, the exact replicas of the band members, had taken their place on the stage. After the close of a flawless performance, Kraftwerk made several stops in the Bucharest clubs to familiarize themselves with the nightlife of the capital and the local electronic scene, according to info from concert organizers Emag!c Entertainment. The band reportedly admitted to not knowing much about Romania, but in the end, they might not have been as ignorant as they believed. After all, both Romania and a part of today’s Germany were under communism in Kraftwerk’s heyday. Furthermore, they played in a hall that used to host numerous Congresses of the Romanian Communist Party. Distances in time, space and feeling are not what they seem. Photographs by Diana Margarit <a href="http://www.kraftwerk.com/" target="-new"<b> Kraftwerk official website</b></a> <a href="http://www.myspace.com/kraftwerk" target="-new"<b> Kraftwerk's Myspace</b></a> 60 2009-06-24T21:42:25Z 2 0 Electronica/Dance 1875 44.4479 26.0979 Bucharest, Romania 2009-06-25T21:55:00Z 4 a-night-of-electro-shock-with-kraftwerk published 2009-06-26T19:42:42Z Palace Hall 1204