Whether you know it or not, you’ve heard Kraftwerk. There’s an elevated possibility you even like them. The highly influential, avant-garde electronic band have been making music for five-plus decades. They’ve weathered the test of time, many band member changes, and continue to persevere through a pandemic. After a two-year delay, Kraftwerk’s 50th anniversary 3D tour arrived in Minneapolis Wednesday night at the historic State Theatre.

Only the third stop on their U.S. and Canadian tour, the State Theatre was an amusing setting for the night’s event. The 101-year-old theater’s merlot-colored velvet seats and gilded accents on the stage arches and façade were a juxtaposition for the thoroughly pixelated soundscape and performance art that lay ahead. A testament to the band’s far-reaching and longstanding relevance, the crowd filling the seats spanned all ages, genders, and stylistic tastes. There were those with graying beards escaping from the confines of masks, goths with chunky black fishnet shirts, candy-colored-haired punks of all ages, and parents bringing their kids to their first 3D concert. Further proving Kraftwerk’s congeniality, a few of the band T-shirts spotted were Sleep, Nine Inch Nails, and even Funkadelic.

Founded by Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider in Dusseldorf, Germany, in 1970, Kraftwerk are often heralded as the godfathers of electronic music. Their curiosity and experimentation kicked the doors wide open for others to play with drum machines, vocoders, and synthesizers, as well as provide mean beats for rappers to spit bars over the top. They brought art into everyday life, influenced musicians across genres, and have been sampled by hundreds of artists, including Ciara, New Order, Afrika Bambaataa, Coldplay, Jay-Z, Miley Cyrus, and more. (The song “Trans Europe Express” alone has been sampled more than 70 times.)

The current lineup — featuring Hutter (the only original member), Fritz Hilpert, Henning Schmitz, and Falk Grieffenhagen — performed the live 3D video show as though they’d been honing their skills together from the band’s inception. With concertgoers’ butts in the seats and their complimentary Kraftwerk-emblazoned 3D glasses firmly attached to their faces, the show began with a cold, robotic voice. Four evenly-spaced podiums glowed a nuclear green on the stage in front of a large white screen as Kraftwerk emerged onto the stage wearing matching crosshatched, high-necked jumpsuits. They began cranking the dials and pushing the buttons and keys before them, all the while remaining composed and affectless.

The evening kicked off with a medley of “Numbers” and “Computer World” parts 1 and 2. The crowd reacted excitedly as the reedy melody and vocoder-laden “Computer World” washed over the crowd while a wave of roiling green numbers danced on the screen. Aided by the 3D glasses, the visuals created the sensation of being trapped behind the screen of a bulky, beige IBM. While the song played, filaments in the group’s matching jumpsuits glowed neon blue.

The band skipped any “How ya’ doing, Minneapolis?” bits, but acknowledged their surroundings in a wonderfully weird way while performing “Spacelab.” After the big screen had attendees orbiting the earth to the song’s dribbling drums and elastic synths, we watched a UFO descend over downtown Minneapolis and land in front of the State Theatre.

“Autobahn” performed live was a total sensory experience. The lengthier track placed the crowd behind the wheel of various vehicles on an idyllic computer-rendered highway. The peppy track bounced through varying levels of intensity as the drum machine pulsed, and synthesizer tones bent to sound like muted car horns, motorcycles whizzing, and even the whine of semi-trucks surging past on the highway.

Later, the incessant beat of “Trans European Express” galloped steadily as the haunting melody that captivated hip-hop sharply cut through. The bass bludgeoned the crowd and shook the seats of the theater while a ghostly white bullet train sped across the linear tracks onscreen. This morphed into a medley that bled into “Metal on Metal” with hollow, percussive, sounds that could make members of the Blue Man Group blush.

The final song of the night before the encore was “The Robots.” Strobes flashed as the tempo increased on a doppler-like radar tone. Soaring synths and plinking keys peppered the track as long, noodle-y robot arms reached out from the screen as pink and white lights flashed around the stage. The screen then dropped to reveal actual robots resembling crash test dummies that danced as much as stiff humanoids could, slowly moving their arms while the silhouette of another robot flickered behind them.

Their encore brought the house down with the iconic “Computer Love.” Colorful sparkles shimmered across sound waves onscreen to the dreamy melody popularly reborn as a Coldplay track. Clean, icy electronic strings coolly floated as staccato drums and reverb-y vocals broke everything into a topsy-turvy sound bath. Each note fell like a raindrop as the rubbery rhythm leaped to keep the tempo.

As the encore wound down, each member of the current Kraftwerk line-up took a moment to really show their stuff before disappearing offstage. Hutter was the last to leave and received a standing ovation. He humbly accepted the applause and bowed twice with his hand over his heart — one man still living his half-century dream and breathing music, art, and computer love into an everyday Wednesday night.

Setlist: 

Numbers/Computer World/Computer World 2

It’s More Fun to Compute/Home Computer

Spacelab

Airwaves

The Man-Machine

Electric Cafe

Autobahn

Geiger Counter/Radioactivity

Metropolis

The Model

Neon Lights

Tour de France/Etape 1/Chrono/Prologue/Etape 2

Trans-Europe Express/Metal on Metal/Abzug

The Robots/Robotronik

Encore: 

Planet of Visions

Mini Calculator/Dentaku

Computer Love

Nonstop/Boing Boom Tschak/Music Nonstop

Kraftwerk

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