Venue:
Wolverhampton Civic
Date: 21/05/2026
Ralf Hutter will be 80 in a few months time. Three years younger than Jagger and McCartney. Only eleven years younger than Elvis. And yet – one of Kraftwerk’s most enduring traits – they feel utterly contemporary in a way that (no disrespect) the elder statesmen referred to do not.
Why is this? It’s technology innit, the computers and stuff. Well, a little bit. But arguably a stadium gig by Coldplay or Taylor Swift will have way more advanced tech than was on-show yesterday. But after seeing them last night at a spellbinding gig in Wolverhampton I think it’s slightly more nuanced. Remember this is the band that famously did not own a computer (PC) when they wrote the greatest song ever written about them, Computer World.
Their current tour is an incremental update of the Multi-Media tour format that they have been putting out since 2016. Four lecterns with various laptop/synth stuff behind them. Four motionless individuals wearing the ‘grid suits’ that light up in time with the music. And a pin-sharp enormous screen behind them. I saw this tour in 2017, 3-d glasses then included, and 2026 is a software update rather than a change of operating system. Part of their ongoing conceptual art/music/dry German humour project is the dethroning of human variety, the machine tooling of the live concert so that everything is as precise and replicable as an Audi gearbox. Onstage 8:00pm on the dot.
Their entire catalogue (in 3-d The Catalogue) is 34 songs, albeit with some that are now 2 or 3 tracks run together. So there’s no dipping into obscure b-sides, fan favourites and deep album cuts. It’s 20 songs that bar the odd in and out have been set in stone as the setlist for the last twenty years.
Numbers is the opener, seguing into Computer World – individuals are the numbers themselves in Matrix green, the data that makes our world. In a sense this is the most contemporary number (hah!) in the whole set. In many of the other futures Kraftwerk imagined in the seventies (more on this later) we, but we absolutely live in the digital world.
The visuals set out – with a couple of instances – the KW iconography, drawn from the album artwork. The Computer World computer is all in one keyboard and screen box from the early eighties rather than a laptop, which we get during Planet of Visions.
Spacelab has some outrageously dated seventies graphics – perhaps from the original Valeriean strip – flyovers of the earth from space, and the google maps icon gag that ends with a cartoon flying saucer landing outside the Civic Hall. Again, a Clarkian future where we would all be living in orbiting habitats has given way to Musk and Bezos trying to out-bro each other.
There’s what might be called a techno section: unreleased/never to be released Tango, a techno’d up Man-Machine, and Electric Cafe. The beats are even chunkier than I remember them from ten years ago.
What’s also timeless about their music is the juxtaposition of soft, melancholic, wistful melodies with industrial beats. A combo that works as well today as it did forty years ago, and in Computer Love there’s the third best melody of the night, while the lyrics brings to mind the minitel terminal of early eighties France – a text only machine which provided messaging, notoriously of course for the French to arrange anonymous assignations.
Neon Lights, perhaps the second best melancholic melody line of the night, is where Hutter’s voice cracks and if possible renders the track even more affecting. After this we get the unexpected – what at a Kraftwerk gig! – a short tribute to friend and collaborator Riuchi Sakamoto, and an immaculate cover of Forbidden Colours (the best melody of the night). I do like to think that Prince style there are vaults deep in Kling Klang of unreleased tracks, some even with Sakamoto.
Radioactivity has become a key track live – lyrics altered to reference nuclear disasters and atrocities, and the ambiguity of the original transformed into something resembling a protest song. It’s a monumental version, and perhaps the heart of the current Kraftwerk experience.
Kraftwerk are nothing if not completely European – and Tour de France and Trans Europe Express in their different ways now celebrate the high water mark of European unity, perhaps in the years post-Schengen and before Brexit, Trump and Putin saw that vision recede into the past.
We end with a suite of songs from the somewhat maligned Electric Cafe, perhaps the point at which they stopped being the future and became the present. Again, crispy beats and catchy hooks, but without the ghost in the machine soul they captured in that imperial period of albums.
The Robots is the encore, and what did I think of during this? That the kind of man-machine they heralded seems as far away as ever – it proves to be incredibly difficult to create a robot, for example, that can do simple cooking tasks. We thought that robots would replace us, instead it turns out to be Chat GPT. A friend who is a mathematician is gob-smacked that AI is solving maths problems with solutions as elegant as any human could devise.
The audience:
Varied, from twenty somethings come to see what all the fuss is about to those at Ralf’s age. A lot of couples. All sat in rapt attention through two hours, with a standing ovation at the end.
It made me think..
They’re the past and the present as much as they ever were. They keep on the whole their visual language in the period of the albums. The wire-frames of Expo 2000 are about as up-to-date as they get, while their music seems every time to have been given a polish and sheen that keeps it shining.
Are they still the future? Well they are so affecting live in part for all the futures that will never happen. From the empty sunny roads of Autobahn to space habitats and European unity they are a catalogue of futures that if they ever came to pass are in the rear view mirror now.
Here’s Tango, which clearly will never get an official release.
I hadn’t realised that Thunderbirds were still touring.
Nice review. Seen them 3 times live over about 15 years, was very excited first time, felt like I was seeing The Beatles! It’s basically the same show every night though as you mentioned, although I think they did some tours where they played (shortened) albums in full. Everyone with the slightest interest should see them once
Yes indeed as they’ve entered that period- like Dylan or McCartney – where every gig has an extra poignancy- as who knows for how much longer? Also the same show every night is very much part of the Kraftwerk proposition
Really looking forward to seeing them rock Stockton next week!
“Part of their ongoing conceptual art/music/dry German humour project is the dethroning of human variety, the machine tooling of the live concert so that everything is as precise and replicable as an Audi gearbox“.
However, in Stockton the suit worn by Ralf Hütter, of all people, malfunctioned so that only half of it kept in sync with the light sequencing. Ironisch, ja?
Thanks for the review, MM – sounds like a great gig. I’m beginning to realise how out of touch I’ve become over the last year or two: I didn’t even know they were touring.
I haven’t seen them in person since July 1991 when they were touring The Mix and, based on your review, I wish I’d been there.
Thanks for this superb review. I’m going to see them in Brighton next weekend and am incredibly excited – have never seen them live.
Incidentally, apropos the Berlin record store thread, I I found a nice bootleg of their 1997 Tribal Gathering performance in Galactic Superstore yesterday!
That’s a great review which prompted me to check out tickets. The RAH 10 p.m. show, £125. I mean I like the band but three figure ticket prices is where I bail out.
You should shell out man. You won’t regret it.
Saw them in (I think) 2003 in Manchester when Florian was still alive and they wore suits.
They were still using the real robots too during, er, The Robots.
It was one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to. Unforgettable.
We’re off to see them at the Albert Hall next week. Can’t wait.
Good luck @pete and @slotbadger – I would also say they are worth that kind of money if you can afford it. 2 hour show.
This could be a show that runs and runs even when all original members are no longer with us. I adore Kraftwerk, but… having seen this show twice in a 10 year timespan, I’m not sure I need to go again. Visually it’s like a really good installation at the Science Museum.
Saw the show last night at Sheffield City Hall.
Show had been sold out for months but managed to get some tickets on Thursday from the venue.
Great seats too. Seven rows from the front, dead centre.
Echo all the comments above.
Stunning show.
This music still sounds like the future.
If you can get to see them, do it.
Saw them in Brighton last night. Very lucky, two rows from the front, close enough to see Ralf cupping his hand around his mic for his vocals
I’ve been binging on the 3D Blu ray for months now so wondered how fresh it would feel. But from the fusillade of figures in Numbers to the encore (they did an encore!) of Man Machine it was, needless to say, utterly spiffing. It’s a live show, there were delightful nanosecond glitches and subtle details to savour – a few more breakbeats and fills in TEE, a truly beautiful Neon Lights, chest pounding kick drums in Computer World … for me Autobahn was probably the weakest link, it seemed to drag a little in this performance and the constituent sections seemed to flow a little clunkily in places.
But what a show! Plenty of fresh visuals, bone rattling bass, delightfully deadpan demeanor and even the hokey one by one leaving of the stage, with each member taking a bow and waving (what happened to the robots?!) was charming. Very glad I finally saw them
Still I’ll never love Brighton Centre – hatchet faced stewards patrolling to ensure no pics, one steward really bollocking a young boy who vaulted an empty seat to get to the loo was definitely OTT – seats packed so closely together the kid had no choice – toilets out of order and grim atmosphere. Sound system seemed to be struggling with the bass reverb too, strange acoustics .
.
Christ.
Shit seats? Bad bogs? PA with COPD? Bullies in charge?
Three-figure ticket price?
Swervetastic.
True, true but all that aside, the sheer physical sensation of being two rows from the front as Trans Europe Express lumbered into life made it all worthwhile!
I went there to see the Wonderstuff in 1991 and it sounds like it hasn’t improved much since. What I most remember is we had balcony tickets but people were climbing over the rail, dangling by their arms, and being carried by the crowd towards the mosh pit, in a sort of reverse stage-dive/crowd surf. I may have done this myself, but details are hazy – drink had been taken.
I do remember running down the platform at Paddington station and jumping into the 1:30am slow train (proper swing doors). I then walked into a lamp post in Reading, on my way back to digs, as a ladyfriend’s heaving chest momentarily distracted my gaze. Did I mention that drink had been taken? Turns out a massive lump on the side of one’s bonce makes a great contraceptive…