After 30+ long years, finally i’ve seen the masters live and even without the original Karl Bartos, (co-founder) Florian Schneider and Wolfgang Flur, last Friday’s Kraftwerk gig in HK was truly an experience. The present line up of Henning Schmitz, Fritz Hilpert, Stefan Pfaffe and original member, co-founder and vocalist Ralf Hutter performed extremely well, as expected. It’s amazing too how they showed so much charisma without uttering a single spiel in between songs. Now, i can’t really say i’m their number one fan but i am definitely a huge fan of Kraftwerk and electronic music in general and i’m glad i can finally tick off “watch Kraftwerk” on my wishlist.
Initially, as much as i already knew they would blow me away, i prepared myself to be a little jaded being that i pretty much know how their concert set up was from acquiring their most recent live DVD a couple of years ago, the larger than life visuals, the ultra clean sound(much like listening through an audiophile’s tube gear), the stage gear etc. I was wrong and despite what i knew, it’s definitely different seeing and hearing Kraftwerk LIVE. My only complaint was that it wasn’t loud as i expected it to be. Kinda expected the bass to rattle people’s rib cages. It would’ve been good as the venue was packed to the gills( the size of two halls of our local World Trade combined) with young Hong Kong hipsters and music geeks, foreigners from everywhere and Germany of course plus us, the few “delegates” from the Philippines.
I went with Mario S. and Dino A. to be joined at the gig itself by Ean of Up dharma Down, his brother in law Chi and our very own original visual graphics guy and good friend Koro Fujiwara. Some of our other friends/djs within the Groove Nation circle couldnt make it due to schedule conflicts but i really was expecting “electronic” musicians and ahem, DJs from Manila to be there being that this is one of those once in a lifetime deals from an act that’s highly influential and deemed as one of the main progenitors of electronic music and a direct influence, especially to techno, electro and even hip hop. Before you can say,we were able to go because we had the funds to throw away, i’m sorry but that’s not the case, no, not at all. It’s something we had to work for and worked around on just to make it last weekend. It’s just simply too important to pass up. It really validates my observation that majority of the local electronic producers and superstar djs are merely in it more on the surface and have no foundation nor sense of history.
It’s Kraftwerk for crying out loud, the very group who influenced the likes of Derrick May, Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, Carl Craig , Richie Hawtin etc.!
Oh yeah, i forgot, in this country majority equate electronic music to Tiesto and Armin Van Buren. Talkin’bout “provincial disco”.
Totally related story HERE.
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