“When Kraftwerk became an institution we stopped being contemporary. Instead we became salesmen of nostalgia”: Karl Bartos reflects on the end of Kraftwerk’s golden era

Kraftwerk.

The debt that today’s music world owes to Kraftwerk is beyond reckoning. That stretch of work that Germany's premiere man-machines released between 1974 (beginning with Autobahn) and culminating with 1981’s prescient Computer World is regarded by many as the foundation of modern electronic music.

However, being a part of the band itself - and pushing at the frontiers of sonics, synthesis and technology - wasn’t always a thrill.