Various Artists
8-Bit Operators: The Music Of Kraftwerk
Astralwerks
By Jose Fritz
In 2005 Kraftwerk ambushed us and pummeled our hearts with a live record, Minimum-Maximum, containing no hint that this tribute compilation was impending. Kraftwerk no longer has limits: 8-bit, 16-bit, stereo, mono or otherwise. They’ve struggled and created a massive original catalog through a maze of hardware limitations. Limitations force creativity and with this disc, that great human experiment repeats itself.
Re-interpreting Kraftwerk’s music within the hardware limitations of their own early years is both masochistic and engaging. A CPU is classified on the basis of the volume of data it is able to access in a single operation. By definition in a single operation, an 8-bit processor can only access 8 bits of data. The first 8-bit microprocessor was the Intel 8080, arriving on the scene in the late ‘70s, and this era lasted until 1987 when the first 16-bit systems became available. Today the limited array of beeps, hums and blips that these machines could produce are considered endearing in their sentimental kitch.
Kraftwerk lived in that box for seventeen years, releasing their first 10 albums in that time. The struggle made them into a beastly genre unto themselves. Their arrangements revolve around synthesizers, loops, samples and electronic percussion, but they also swore an oath of fealty to Kraut rock in 1970. Despite this, many musicologists have never accepted them as true practitioners of the genre, shunning, segregating and sequestering them. To see how wrong this is, go hunt up a bootleg of their June 25, 1971 Bremen concert.
It is only now in the twilight of their careers, while hobbling along on their dual aluminum quad canes, that they have become a classic. It is now that they see their work reach it’s height in caricature, in parody and in satire. Their fans are now musicians themselves; here they remix, repent, reinterpret and represent. The result is the sort of things that the geeks at the Bend Music Fest will slobber all over.
The thick irony here is that Kraftwerk, despite their use of computer-controlled loops and samples, emphasized live improvisation at all times. Today, most electronic musicians cannot perform live. Oh, they still book tours, sell tickets, arrive at clubs and stride out on stage. Then they station themselves behind an apparatus and the failure appears. Music plays, but from where? The performances of some [BT, for example] consist of lip-synching and jumping up and down behind a keyboard. These shows are to live music as Ashlee Simpson is to the sequencer. But what the hell, the Beatles lip-synched too, and John Lennon never tried to pound out a breakbeat on a bent Speak & Spell.
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