German electronic pioneers Kraftwerk were one of the most musically important groups of the 20th Century. Emerging from Düsseldorf in 1970, they built their own drum machines and synth equipment to form a style of music previously unheard. Eschewing the rock and pop model of rhythm-based, blues-derived music played on organic instrumentation, Kraftwerk's music was beat-driven and minimal, and emanated from machine, rather than man. Few others had even tried such experimentation, and nobody made it work anywhere near as well as Kraftwerk. Their innovation invented techno and all its associated genres, and had an essential influence on every kind of modern music that utilises beats: including disco, house, trance, drum'n'bass, hip-hop, synth-pop, electro, IDM, breaks, industrial, and more.
Beginning as a krautrock jam-band, it took until the 1974 Autobahn album (and its 22-minute long title track) before Kraftwerk were paid much attention. A shorter edit of "Autobahn" become a minor hit in several countries and was noted for sounding like a musical version of the experience of driving on a motorway. It was their first truly innovative piece and drew the interest of musicians worldwide.
Several similarly pioneering records followed, including Trans-Europe Express (1977) which had a title track similar to "Autobahn", but instead sounded like being on a train. Kraftwerk's lyrics (often processed through a vocoder) dealt with modern European life, computers, and technology, further giving the impression that the band themselves were actually robots. The Man-Machine (1978), and the group's notorious shyness from public view or media contact, added to the image. When they performed live and revealed themselves to be human after all, they still had the humour to perform the song "The Robots" from off-stage, replaced on-stage by replica mannequins.
Kraftwerk have only given a handful of interviews in their entire career, and carefully control what information is revealed about them. Therefore, there have been long periods in the 80s and 90s where nobody has known what they were doing, or if they were still involved in music at all. Their last album of original studio material was Tour de France Soundtracks in 2003, although they released a live double-album in 2005 called Minimum-Maximum, to an enthusiastic critical response.
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