Auto-motive: Kraftwerk showcase their assets

Forty years ago, Kraftwerk were prophets who took digital music beyond known frontiers and synthesized songs that celebrated machine-age icons – Autobahn, Trans Europe Express and Tour De France, for example. Today the Düssedorfers cater for our nostalgia for a time when we imagined that the future would be futuristic.

A cynic watching the static four-piece on stage (as I did at Latitude on Saturday 20 July 2013) might speculate that they spent ninety minutes at their illuminated lecterns counting out their performance fees. Their music played on after they had each taken a bow and left the stage, after all.

I detect a more profound message, however. Continuing to profit from their back catalogue is a potent demonstration that control of intellectual capital transcends considerations of product cheap ativan, or the means of its production. Happily their spare, catchy tunes and driving electro rhythms provided equal stimulus for the feet. The 3D stage show was worthwhile, if only for the drive-in-B-movie experience of a bespectacled crowd.