BERLIN • Kraftwerk's Florian Schneider, co-founder of the pioneering electronic music group that re-wired the future of pop, has died, the group's management said on Wednesday.
He was 73 years old. In a statement from Kraftwerk's publicist in Los Angeles, co-founder Ralf Huetter said Schneider died following a short battle with cancer.
Schneider and Huetter began their artistic collaboration in 1968 as part of the so-called krautrock movement - a broad experimental genre blending psychedelic rock with electronic rhythms and early synthesizers, seen as a rebellion against the Anglo-Saxon pop brought in by British and American troops.
But Kraftwerk, launched in 1970, hatched a far more singular vision from their Kling Klang studio in the western German city of Dusseldorf.
Their influence on a par with that of The Beatles, the duo crafted the blueprint for genres from new wave to synth-pop, hip-hop to rock and industrial to techno.
The nearly 23-minute title track of their 1974 album Autobahn - the German word for highway - comprised the entire first side of the LP with a prototypical, hypnotising sound of the future, punctuated with car horns, doors slamming and ignition.
The industrial clang, sparse arrangements and computerised beats of Kraftwerk - which means "power station" in German - brought international recognition to the group who famously said they wanted to make music more as machines than as men.
Schneider's tools included the electric flute, violin, electric guitar and synthesizer.
He also sang with Huetter, who played keyboards.
Their haunting bass lines, synthesizer pads and drum machines combined with robotic vocals captured the attention of a dizzying array of stars past and present, including David Bowie, Madonna, Daft Punk and Kanye West.
Born April 7, 1947, Schneider was the son of Paul Schneider-Esleben, a prominent architect whose designs included the Cologne airport.
The musician met Huetter when the pair were both students in Dusseldorf, where they began cultivating their pioneering concepts, tapping the ubiquity of machines and the growing place of technology in daily life.
While Autobahn was perhaps their best-known album internationally, they also found global success with Radioactivity (1975), Trans-Europe Express (1977), The Man Machine (1978) and even the later Tour De France Soundtracks (2003).
The notoriously enigmatic group in 2018 also took the Grammy for Best Dance/Electronic Album for 3-D The Catalogue, a high-tech recreation of their back albums.
They won a 2014 lifetime achievement Grammy, but the six-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees have yet to be chosen for induction into that pantheon of music royalty.
They last performed in Singapore at the Esplanade Concert Theatre in 2013.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
