Kraftwerk Takes Over Nuits de Fourvière: A Spectacular Musical Conquest!

On that evening at the Nuits de Fourvière, there was no opening act, a subtle nod to Kraftwerk’s seminal role in music history: emerging in the early 1970s from Düsseldorf, they burst onto the scene without any warning or predecessors, laying the foundations for electronic music through their experiments with the technological tools of their time. Although they have few predecessors (citing diverse influences like Stockhausen, the Beach Boys, and James Brown), they face virtually no competition.

No one else can claim to have so drastically altered the course of music, established a new genre, created enduring classics, and remained actively (and radiantly) non-nostalgic for over fifty years.

“The greatest concert of all time”

Their influence continues to proliferate after decades. Attending a Kraftwerk concert is to experience the primary wellspring of inspiration for a vast swath of modern electro and pop music. That night, for instance, echoed the sounds of New Order and Soulwax, LCD Soundsystem and Depeche Mode, through to Talking Heads, Aphex Twin, Daft Punk, Air, and Phoenix – much of the French Touch proudly claims this legacy. Zaho de Sagazan, present in the crowd, wouldn’t disagree. The Saint-Nazaire singer rightly enraptured, shared an immensely flattering Instagram story: “The best concert of all time, never experienced anything like it.”

Following an extensive North American tour in the spring, which saw them performing about thirty shows in less than two months, the four members of Kraftwerk are spending the summer in Europe, much to our delight. Their performance at the Nuits de Fourvière marked their first French show of the year, ahead of their headline slot at La Route du Rock on Saturday, August 16.

Cosmic Journey

Right on schedule at 9:30 PM, four silhouettes took their places behind their respective consoles and kicked off with a mesmerizing tribute to Kraftwerk’s eighth album starting with Numbers (and its hypnotic sequence of neon green numbers), followed by Computer World leading into Computer World 2, Home Computer, and concluding with It’s More Fun to Compute, interspersed with samples from the Magic Spell.

Unlike their last visit to France three years ago at Rock en Seine, this wasn’t a 3D show, but that hardly mattered: their spectacular videos more than made up for the total lack of movement on stage. Georg Bongartz, who joined the quartet in 2023, was fully committed to managing these live videos. When the first notes of Spacelab played, it was only logical to find ourselves in the cockpit of a spaceship, orbiting above Earth. To accompany the haunting melody and vocoded voice, a map of Europe appeared on screen with a red pin on Lyon, eliciting cheers from the audience.

Our spacecraft gradually approached this destination, flying over the Rhône and the hill of Fourvière to the ancient theater. Airwaves and its waves followed this cosmic journey, then the rarity Tango and what would remain one of the highlights of the concert, the majestic The Man-Machine, title track of their seventh album which also featured The Model (with its images of vintage fashion shows), Neon Lights and its neon signs, and, as an unexpected encore, the monumental The Robots.

Nods to France

It’s hard to see what the quartet is doing behind their four consoles. With his headset microphone and slightly malfunctioning luminous suit (the only glitch in this well-oiled machine), Ralf Hütter, the only original member, leads the performance. One can guess he is playing various synthesizers and tinkering with buttons on mysterious devices, while Henning Schmitz adds sound effects and supplements the array of synthesizers. Their colleague Falk Grieffenhagen, responsible for video aspects from 2013 to 2022, now handles the electronically generated percussion. Curious fans can check out videos from recent years on YouTube, filmed live from the side or from above for a bird’s-eye view, to understand precisely what their equipment entails.

After a melancholic Radioactivity, introduced by a Morse code message, the concert’s final stretch was rich with nods to France, featuring a deep dive into the Tour de France album. In nearly perfect French and against a backdrop of legendary race stages, between labored breaths, Ralf talked about “punctures on the cobblestones” and “the final sprint at the finish”, especially poignant as the Tour de France was set to tackle Mont Ventoux the following day.

An Astonished Crowd

As La Forme and its vigorous exercise program concluded, a train appeared on the screen. It was time to board the Trans-Europe Express, one of the most enchanting pieces in all of Kraftwerk’s repertoire, both sinister and sublime. True to the album, the song continued its journey through the following two tracks, Metal on Metal and Abzug.

The final part of this generous show, despite its cold, robotic exterior, included Mini Calculateur (likely a hit with Philippe Katerine), Planet of Visions (based on Expo 2000, which the band composed for the World Expo in Hanover, 2000), and the dreamy trio of Boing Boom Tschak, Techno Pop, and Musique Non Stop – effectively the entire A-side of Electric Café, the ninth album by these venerable electro veterans. One by one, each of the four members performed a solo with the machinery at hand before coming forward to salute the astonished crowd. “We are just programmed to do whatever you want from us,” they declared in an encore on The Robots: mission accomplished.