Kraftwerk Quotes

I grew up in the eighties; that's probably why I like some of the earlier electronic from Kraftwerk to all throughout new wave and things like that.

I really love a lot of Japanese music, like Ryuichi Sakamoto and this guy I got really into, Tatsuro Yamashita. When I was a little younger, I thought synthesizers meant Kraftwerk, cold, robotic, weird, Autobahn. But these guys are having a lot of fun on these things. Sometimes. Sometimes it's very somber. They could go either way.

When I first heard Kraftwerk, I thought they were an American band singing in German.

I thought we had opposite visions of electronic music. Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk had a very robotic, mechanical approach. I had a more impressionist vision - a Ravel/Debussy approach.

Bands like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, who I respect, have a very robotic, dehumanised approach. They're almost an apology for machines. It's very German.

What I would really like to do, if I could have a sort of kingship for a short time and organize the group of my dreams - I would make one group which would be a combination of, say, Parliament and Kraftwerk - put those two together and say, "Make a record." Something that would be an extraordinary combination: the weird physical feeling of Parliament with this strange, rigid stuff over the top of it.

Two records put me over the top with hip-hop. One of them was 'Planet Rock,' and the other had no lyrics - it was called 'Numbers,' from a group called Kraftwerk. Every kid in the 'hood in New York and New Jersey was popping, locking, and breaking to that record. It was the hottest track on the street at the time.

Kraftwerk has become historic and is now exposed in museums.

House, rap, R&B, disco rock, they are all part of hip-hop culture. Why you ain't playing Kraftwerk along with Jay-Z? That's hip-hop.

I grew up listening to a lot of Kraftwerk, Gary Numan, Devo, all that stuff.

I think I heard it [ Ferris Bueller's Day Off ] earlier. This was being played on a station in San Francisco called Live 105, which was a new wave station. It was one of the first stations to change its format in the early '80s. There was this wave of really strange music coming from Europe like Kraftwork and Freur.

I could definitely rock out to Kraftwerk's "Tour De France," Tubeway Army, or Gary Numan. All of that stuff has an infectious beat, but with "Oh Yeah," I can't even identify what's going on. It sounds like typewriter keys, a couple of synth notes and then this really deep "Oh yeah," which I always picture as Andre The Giant on vocals.