Kraftwerk in Limerick review: German pioneers nudge King John's Castle into the electronic age
Kraftwerk at King John's Castle in Limerick on Wednesday night. Picture: Brian Arthur
★★★★☆
With reliable efficiency and a characteristic absence of anything close to messing about, the four figures who constitute the current line-up of Kraftwerk switch the power on as a lot of us are still coming through the entrance of King John’s Castle. A cascade of digits form a Matrix-like electronic waterfall behind them.
Kraftwerk are part of a series of gigs at the impressive setting organised by the team from the city's Dolan’s venue. It continues over the next few days with Madness (Friday) and The Stunning (Saturday), before The Coronas play in August.
Clad in their circuitry-lined jumpsuits, motionless at their work stations, Kraftwerk's quartet of technicians move seamlessly from ‘Numbers/Computer World’ to ‘Home Computer/It’s More Fun To Compute’ while the back drop changes to a graphic of a personal computer that looks quaint now but was a portent back in 1981.
The future is not what it used to be. The Computer World album predicted the ubiquity of digital technology but even the mighty ‘Werk could not have foreseen their audience recording them on the supercomputers in their pockets. As a TV test signal disintegrates into what closely resembles a malfunctioning game of Tetris, every bass note punches you in the throat. It’s like being given a demonstration in an eye-wateringly expensive hi-fi shop.
The elements, however, are conspiring against them. It’s a beautiful summer’s evening in King John's Castle, but that’s the problem. The visuals are such a huge part of the show but it’s hard to appreciate them fully when the setting sun is shining in your eyes.
Ignoring that, we’re now in some sort of Space 1999 escape pod complete with quarter inch tape driven controls, orbiting the earth as ‘Space Lab’ from The Man Machine album plays. The visuals break to a Google Maps tag over Limerick – which earns a cheer - and then a flying saucer that wouldn’t have looked out of place in The Day The Earth Stood Still lands in front of the castle.
The LEDs on the suits go red during ‘Man Machine’, the backdrop borrows from Mondrian and the richness of the sound of yesterday’s tomorrow has us all worshiping at technology’s altar.
One of the four figures looks to the side of the stage, perhaps feigning a technical hitch just to assure us there are humans manning the controls. The display cops a feel of the old Time Tunnel TV show and then forms 8-bit representations of our guides through this digital onslaught. Beep, Beep. There’s the Volkswagen. We’re out on the ‘Autobahn’ with the animation that RTÉ used to fill out the schedule with when I was still the child who has just elbowed me in the memory.
I always thought they were singing “Fun, Fun, Fun” as a homage to car songs of the Beach Boys but my German partner assures me it’s “Fahren, Fahren, Fahren”, as in drive, drive, drive, which does make a bit more sense.
‘Computer Love’, with that marvellous riff that even Coldplay couldn’t ruin, gives way to ‘Neon Lights’ which I think is their greatest song. I remember how my sister brought The Man-Machine album into our house in the 1980s and it seemed to have been beamed in from another dimension.
Bono once said something about Kraftwerk being a great soul band and, before you throw your eyes up to heaven, you can hear what he’s talking about in this song, which U2 covered for a decent B-side. There’s a delicate fragility to such a beautiful urban hymn.
The clean lines and geometric perfection of the bridge and track graphics during ‘Trans Europe Express’ reflect the unmatchable precision of the music. This record, and ‘Metal On Metal’ which it drifts into, were an inspiration for the first wave of hip-hop but this is merely one strand of their influence. It’s impossible to imagine modern music without the foundation Kraftwerk laid down, although everything that came in their wake is akin to a slightly faded Xerox copy. Kraftwerk were unique because they moved in uncharted territory.
To finish we get ‘The Robots’, ‘Planet Of Visions’ and ‘Boing Boom Tschak’ crossfaded with ‘Music Non-Stop’ – a run of songs that proves Kraftwerk are also the cornerstone on which house music was built - but they had already bowled us over long before that. The display veered from a synthesised Vitruvius man to Space Invaders to Cyrillic warnings before we staggered back out onto the street, our senses stuck on blue screen, struggling to recalibrate after the pummelling they had received. I already called them unique but it’s too small a word. There really is nothing like Kraftwerk. The rest of the world still hasn’t caught up.
