For a group as profoundly influential as Kraftwerk it’s perhaps surprising that they aren’t one of the most frequently-appearing groups in our long-running Baker’s Dozen series. There are fewer than 20 examples of Kraftwerk records appearing, which pales in comparison to, for example, Bowie or Miles Davis.
As you’ll see from the collated Bakers of Bakers list below, their direct impact on artists we love and cover has tended to be on those who followed in the immediate electronic music boom of the late ’70s and early ’80s, such as OMD, Duran Duran, Erasure. I wonder though if this is because Kraftwerk’s impact wasn’t one that was really felt through long-playing albums which, after all, were not always easy to acquire since their appearance in a futurist gleam in the mid-1970s. Instead, their musical impact was a permeation that went beyond long-playing albums to shape arguably the vast majority of music made on machines and computers ever sine.
As you’ll see from contributions by Trevor Horn, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Michael Rother, Marie Davidson and the late Jóhann Jóhannsson in our Baker’s Dozen Kraftwerk compilation below, it’s a sense not only of the new that they found so inspiring, but also a pop magic – that alchemical moment when the visionary might also change human hearts. Click the image of Kraftwerk below to begin reading the Kraftwerk Baker’s Dozen.
