Uwe Schütte's Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany (Penguin, 2021) is not your typical rock star biography. Eschewing gossipy interpersonal details, Schütte instead contextualizes Kraftwerk within contemporaneous debates about German cultural identity in the wake of Nazi atrocities. Kraftwerk's intellectual and artistic debts to Weimar era movements like Bauhaus and early Soviet experimentation in constructivism and futurism are fully elucidated, showing how Kraftwerk's futuristic electro-pop was actually deeply rooted in pan-European avant-garde movements. Schütte also provides in-depth analysis of each of Kraftwerk's albums, including now-disowned early recordings and the most recent Kraftwerk studio release, 2003's Tour de France. With this book, Schütte makes a compelling case for Kraftwerk as a major artist in 20th century pop music, as influential in its own way as The Beatles or Elvis Presley.
Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts.
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Uwe Schütte, "Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany" (Penguin, 2021) | New Books in German Studies podcast - Listen or read transcript on Metacast
