Music

Machines making music. Repetitive, metronomic, locked-in beats. Voices processed to sound as inexpressive as robots. A warning, and an embrace, of technology as both the shaper and subject of songs, of the ever-growing human codependence with the inhuman. In 21st-century art, especially music, these ideas and sounds are inescapable.Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, the German musicians at the core of Kraftwerk, were already committed to those concepts way back in the analog 1970s, when synthesizers were primitive and the idea of a pop group as a “man-machine” was revolutionary. (The original German, “Die Mensch-Maschine,” isn’t gendered; it means “Human-Machine.”) In an era of plush FM-radio pop, disco sensuality and punk rawness, Kraftwerk’s music was mechanical and coolly austere instead. Meanwhile, their songs sensed the coming digital era: impassive and heartless, but also seductive in its precision and possibility.Indirectly and directly, Kraftwerk’s music would quickly provide templates for popular music to come. Its songs showed the way toward synth-pop, electropop, techno and countless varieties of electronic dance music. And Kraftwerk’s crisp, flat electronic drum sounds and the synthesizer line of “Trans-Europe Express” were picked up by Afrika Bambaataa for his 1982 “Planet Rock,” a cornerstone single in hip-hop’s discography.Hütter, Kraftwerk’s machine-tuned vocalist and main lyricist, credited Schneider, who died last month, as the group’s “sound fetishist.” While Hütter and other band members wrote some of Kraftwerk’s poppiest songs, Schneider was the one who coaxed the sound of Kraftwerk out of clunky 1970s technology and, through the years, deployed an ever-updated array of hardware and software. Schneider honed and then expanded Kraftwerk’s synthetic vocabulary of non-naturalistic blips, clicks and buzzes, Vocoder harmonies and tones sustained beyond human breath, echoes and reverberations that did not come out of physical spaces.Schneider left Kraftwerk in 2008. More recently, Hütter’s Kraftwerk has been performing (and sonically tweaking) its catalog from the 1970s through the early 2000s, reaping well-deserved recognition for the ways Kraftwerk transformed popular music.Here are 10 essential songs that Schneider co-wrote and co-produced.Kraftwerk, ‘Ruckzuck’ (1970)Before Kraftwerk tightened its songs into terse pop structures, its music grew out of the hypnotic late-1960s German rock movement known as kosmische. The current Kraftwerk has renounced its early albums, but “Ruckzuck” (which means “in a flash”), from its self-titled 1970 album, now seems to bridge early and latter-day Kraftwerk. It begins with Schneider playing the flute, the instrument he soon gave up for synthesizers, as a rhythm instrument, syncopating one note over a drone. The beat, though played on a physical drum kit, feels like one of later Kraftwerk’s methodical midtempo pulses — until things go psychedelically haywire.Kraftwerk, ‘Autobahn’ (1974)A car door slams, an engine revs up, a horn honks. Then a road trip becomes a hermetic 22-minute journey — it feels like the car windows never open — through changing territory. With sustained chords swooping above an octave-hopping bass line, “Autobahn” is as smooth as a half-remembered Beach Boys song in the early section that was excerpted to become a pop single. Then there are other vehicles swooping by, a droning straightaway, some fiddling with the car radio and some blissful cruising on motifs that were slipped into the song early on.Kraftwerk, ‘Radioactivity’ (1975)Kraftwerk’s first version of “Radioactivity,” before it retrofitted lyrics about events like Chernobyl, was cagey about whether it was a dirge for a nuclear accident, or a celebration of how pop radio can spread a song: “Tune into the melody/Radioactivity, is in the air for you and me.” But a sense of alarm was always there in its Morse-code blips, its insistent repeated bass notes and its minor-key synthesizer line, punctuated by whooshes like steam escaping a safety valve.Kraftwerk, ‘The Robots’ (1978)“The Robots” starts like gadgets warming up, then gets a rhythm track so slyly propulsive that it has been sampled dozens of times, full of question-and-answer phrases: a bass line that hops between high and low, a synthesizer hook behind the deadpan “We are the robots” that immediately gets a four-note reply. Every so often, there’s an interlude where the robots might be singing (in Russian) to themselves.Kraftwerk, ‘Neon Lights’ (1978)Shimmering repeat-echoes surround many of the keyboard tones in “Neon Lights,” an unabashed ballad that is one of Kraftwerk’s most angst-free songs. Over major chords, its handful of lyrics celebrate how “At the fall of night, this city’s made of light.” Its urban soundscape is uncluttered and unhurried, floating in the midrange over a simple beat, and its long wordless coda launches an extended synthesizer line to soar overhead.Kraftwerk, ‘Home Computer’ (1981)Skeletal but decidedly funky, “Home Computer” features some trademark early Kraftwerk sounds, contrasting crispness and haze: a bass line with a hint of being plucked, a muffled four-on-the-floor thump, bits of hiss turned into simulated cymbal accents, some keyboard hooks that waft in with no clear attack and others that ping sharply. Between its chanted verses, “Home Computer” goes abstract; with a beat, tinkly sounds and cheerfully dissonant arpeggios, who needs a chorus?Kraftwerk, ‘Boing Boom Tschak’ (1986)While hip-hop was listening to Kraftwerk, Kraftwerk had clearly been listening to hip-hop. This track is brash and mid-1980s boombox-ready, built on onomatopoetic, pitch-shifted vocal syllables that double as percussion and drums that sound like exploding balloons — well aware of how brittle every sound can be.Kraftwerk, ‘Techno Pop’ (1986)“Techno Pop” segues out of “Boing Boom Tschak” and immediately widens its palette: with unpitched thuds and clanks, with percussion suggesting xylophones alongside pots and pans, with electronics that can buzz or beep and with a hook that travels from simulated viola and string section to quasi-organ to bell tones. The constantly mutating track delivers what the lyrics promise: “synthetic electronic sounds/industrial rhythms all around.”Kraftwerk, ‘Chrono’ (2003)Bouncy with a nervous undercurrent, “Chrono,” from the “Tour de France” album, puts organ-like tones through all kinds of meltdowns: pitches warping, patterns unraveling, notes reversing. One of the album’s recurring tunes and some French spoken words appear near the end, but they’ve been thoroughly undermined.Florian Schneider, ‘Stop Plastic Pollution’ (2015)The sight of village fishermen in Ghana hauling in plastic garbage prompted Schneider to release “Stop Plastic Pollution,” with lyrics as blunt as its title. The music is denser and more nuanced: burbles and drips and whooshing wave sounds, but also a viscous, submerged funk vamp that sounds like it’s being detected on sonar. More

This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.Dave Greenfield, the keyboardist of the Stranglers, a band that rose to prominence in Britain’s 1970s punk rock scene while sparring, and sometimes brawling, with several of its leading figures, died on Sunday. He was 71.Mr. Greenfield, who had been hospitalized because of heart problems, tested positive for the novel coronavirus a week before he died, the band said in a statement.“Golden Brown,” the band’s best-known song, largely sprang from a riff written by Mr. Greenfield and featured his dreamlike harpsichord playing, part of a sound that often diverged from the punk archetype. The song was frequently played on BBC radio despite a lyric partly about heroin, reached No. 2 on the British charts and was named the most performed work of 1982 at Britain’s Ivor Novello Awards for songwriting and composing.David Paul Greenfield was born on March 29, 1949, in Brighton, England. He studied music theory and taught himself how to play the piano, he said in an interview in 2004. He joined the Stranglers in 1975, less than a year after the group formed in Guildford, England.With a thick mustache, fringed, medium-length hair and a Hammond organ style that prompted comparisons to The Doors, Mr. Greenfield seemed an unlikely punk. He and his bandmates were older and more musically experienced than many of those who became famous around them, though they rapidly developed a rough-edged reputation.“In those days it was always the Stranglers against everybody else,” the group’s bassist, Jean-Jacques Burnel, told The Guardian in 2001, reminiscing about a brawl after a 1976 gig in which he said he, Mr. Greenfield and the other Stranglers faced off against members of the Ramones, the Sex Pistols and the Clash.The group fought rivals, critics and audiences alike, and boasted of having gaffer-taped a French music journalist, Philippe Manoeuvre, to the Eiffel Tower. Mr. Greenfield also joined his bandmates in trying heroin, although according to Mr. Burnel he “was sensible and quit the next day.”He said that before joining the Stranglers his main influences had been Jon Lord of Deep Purple and Rick Wakeman of the progressive rock band Yes.“He was the difference between the Stranglers and every other punk band,” Hugh Cornwell, the group’s founding singer, said on Twitter.Mr. Greenfield, who was also a pilot, is survived by his wife, Pam. More

“Hello.” “Don’t know what’s going on with that. I’m going to try to fix this. We’re ready, I think.” “Hi. I’m Dua, and I’ll be your instructor today.” “Nothing was a no-go. We were just experimenting and playing. Everything was just fun.” [music for “Physical”] Singing: “Come on.” “It just makes you want to go. We can’t go outside right now, I guess. But if I could, I’d go dance in the middle of the street.” Singing: “Let’s get physical. Lights out, follow the noise. Baby, keep on dancing like you ain’t got a choice. So come on, come on, come on. Let’s get physical.” “I wanted to get away from the anxiety and the pressures of making a second record. Because everyone’s like, oh, it’s a scary album. Just trying to constantly recreate that success.” Singing: “One, don’t pick up the phone. You know he’s only calling ’cause he’s drunk and alone. Two, don’t let him in. You’ll have to kick him out again.” “The Grammy goes to —” “Dua Lipa.” [applause] “I wanted to make something that I felt I wasn’t hearing on the radio. I wanted it to be upbeat. I wanted it just to be fun.” “What was the day in the studio like when you created ‘Physical’?” “We went to Jason’s studio in Tarzana, which is like a weird, mystical land of its own.” “Thirty fruit trees. My wife’s garden over there. Hey, Midnight.” “They’re ridiculously cute. They look like giant poodles.” “It’s this kind of magical little garden, and inside here is like a spaceship, so you kind of get all the worlds here. A lot of times, songwriting sessions are hard because you’re on like a blind date, basically. And this was cool because it just felt like instant party-family zone.” “Sarah, Coffee and I have been working together for a really long time.” “I’ve written songs with Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj.” “Sarah, any time she gets into a session, she has to set up her altar, basically.” “I have, like, 5,000 tarot decks. I collect them. It’s a good icebreaker to a session.” “How do Dua’s cards usually turn out?” “She always gets the Queen of Wands, which is a card that’s saying, this is her destiny and this is where she’s supposed to be.” “Do you just pull the same cards for all of your artists?” “No! You never — no! I would be a fraud. [laughs]” “We’re like, all right, let’s do something really crazy, ’80s, Flashdance-y. This is the way we’ll ease into the week. Once we get something really crazy out of us, then we can just kind of carry on.” “She was like, I want to get some crazy, world-sounding instruments in here, and I pull up a Persian flute sample and —” [flute sounds] [flute music] “As soon as he did it, he was like — we all kind of perked up, and we were like, yes, this is it!” “They’re the best hype team ever. They’re like, that’s amazing! Which is so important in a room, by the way for producers, because we’re all insecure, trying to make ideas in front of you guys.” “And we all were kind of laughing and like, this is crazy. What are we doing?” “In my mind, her with her deep voice, that kind of, almost Depeche Mode-y, but like a pop version of it, like midnight driving in a Corvette.” “So Jason’s sitting at his synth, whipping up the track, and what are you guys doing?” “Me, Sarah and Coffee, we just, we’re writing. It really is like a puzzle. You’re constantly putting little bits together, and you work as a team.” “Someone says a word that leads to a line, that leads to a melody.” “Anything we throw out, I write it down, and I write it in all caps.” Singing: “Common love isn’t for us.” “I need it to scream at me because if it screams at me and I don’t like it, then maybe we change it.” Singing: “We created something phenomenal, don’t you agree?” “Asking a question to the audience also feels a little bit nostalgic.” “Dua gets right into the booth, man. When she’s excited about something, she just goes for it.” “You’ll never mistake Dua’s voice for somebody else. It’s very thick, warm, sexy. Her low range is insane.” Singing: “You got me feeling diamond rich. Nothing on this planet compares to it. Don’t you agree?” “I speak very good Lorna. She would tell me that she could hear a smile.” “Do you hear a smile in ‘Physical’?” “I do. I hear I’m ear to ear. Honestly, we were just being so ridiculous in the studio, so I just kind of went on in the room mic, and was like, what if I just do this?” Singing: “Who needs to go to sleep when I got you next to me?” “It allows everything to sort of drop out before it hits again, right?” “Yeah. It’s the ‘suction’ effect. You pull it back, and then you release it.” Singing: “All night, I riot with you, I know you got my back, and you know I got you.” “The verses are like this moody vibe, and then it blasts into this anthemic chant.” Singing: “Let’s get physical.” “It’s almost like you’re at a rally.” “Remember ‘Care Bears’?” “Yeah.” “To me, that’s what the chorus is. It is a Care Bear shooting out a beam of light into the world.” “Dua came up with that bridge melody, just messing around. So the fact that the song can even go from the big chorus to the next level is pretty wild.” Singing: “Let’s get physical. Hold on just a little tighter, come on. Hold on.” “It’s a roast to sing. It’s the climax of the song, but you have to do that twice through after verse-bridge-chorus, verse-bridge-chorus, double-middle-eight, back into a double chorus. It’s a roast. It’s so hard.” Singing: “Tell me if you’re ready, come on. Baby, keep on dancing.” “Yeah, really, just like ‘Aaaah!’ I just see ‘Flashdance,’ like ‘Maniac.’ It’s just so feel-good.” Singing: “Let’s get physical.” “I didn’t know how anybody else would react to it. So when I sent it to my manager, I was like, oh, it’s a bit over the top, but I bloody love it.” “The flute almost didn’t make it. I had to fight for this flute. I think Koz might have saved the day.” “There was a lot of debate on the flute. The original demo of the flute was blazing off the top. You press play, and then it’s just — this really loud flute. So my solution was to just filter it down. No one ever really said anything after that, so I assumed that it was OK. It’s all about the flute to me. It’s about the flute, and that drive. You just never want to lose that energy of when they made it because sometimes that’s so hard to recreate.” “Dua Lipa, ooh!” “Ah, this chorus!” “So impressed!” “Come on. Come on, Dua!” “I believe in divine timing, and I believe that we needed this record.” “I imagine everyone dancing around their living rooms, and wailing and flailing their arms in the air.” “It’s OK to let your mind run away for a second and have some fun, and try and see the good in everything. A little something to just help you get out of bed a bit easier, which I felt like was something that I needed myself.” “So we’ll start with a breathing exercise. Inhale. And exhale.” “The ‘Physical’ workout video, where did that idea come from?” “That’s just playing and being — I wanted to have my own Jane Fonda workout video.” “I feel like with the virus now, an at-home workout video is oddly relevant.” “I wish it was otherwise.” “Did you have a favorite of the moves?” “The Fonda because it’s an ode to that, and also the Crybaby is just hilarious and silly, and I would never ever do it in any other situation other than that.” Singing: “Phy-phy-phy-physical!” Singing: “I got the horses in the back.” Singing: “Di, di, di, di, di.” Singing: “The debt I owe, got to sell my soul, ’cause I can’t say no, no, I can’t say no.” Singing: “Man, what’s the deal? Man, I’m coming through. It’s your girl, Lizzo.” More