Wolfgang Flür: on joy, Kraftwerk, Daft Punk, Times and more
Plus Pangaea, Rebekka Karijord, María Terremoto and more
Wolfgang Flür in 2025 is everything that Kraftwerk, his former band, are not: friendly, communicative and shot through with a vivid sense of humour. He’s productive too. While Kraftwerk, with whom he served from 1973 to 1987, endlessly tour the world, knocking out the old hits in impressively refined new digital versions, Flür is, when we speak at the end of January, preparing the release of his second solo album in three years: Times, the follow up to 2022’s sparkling Magazine 1.
This is the second time I’ve interviewed Flür - the first was for Line Noise in 2021 - and he is exceptional company: funny, open, lucid and with some fascinating stories to tell. You get the impression that if you met him in one of Düsseldorf’s pubs you would end up laughing long into the night and wake up with a sore head and some wonderfully hazy memories. (You can hear the full interview here.)
Ralf Hütter, who formed Kraftwerk and continues at its head today, gets some pretty short stick from Flür. But that’s understandable, after he and Florian Schneider filed a lawsuit in 2000 to try to prevent the publication of Flür’s autobiography Ich war ein Roboter (I Was a Robot), in which he pulls back the curtain on his years in a group who turned out to be very human indeed.
In our interview Flür claims, for example, that Hütter “has no more real friends”, which is basically impossible to verify, although Flür does still keep in contact with his old Kraftwerk crew. Emil Schult, the German painter, poet and audio-visual artist who co-wrote some of Kraftwerk’s greatest hits including The Model and Computer Love, contributes lyrics to two songs on Flür’s new album; and Flür also had an emotional re-connection with Schneider, who founded Kraftwerk with Hütter, after Schneider had also left the band. (In my first Line Noise interview with Flür he told a very moving story about an unexpected meeting with Schneider in a Düsseldorf cafe in 2016, four years before Schneider passed away.)
Perhaps more relevantly, Flür has a very interesting take on the problems of the modern-day Kraftwerk live experience. By a strange kink of timing, I saw Kraftwerk and then Flür live in quick succession in summer 2023 and, while I enjoyed the Kraftwerk concert a great deal, it struck me as a little cold, where Flür’s set was a riot of fun. I mention to Flür that it looked like he was having a lot of fun on stage. He quickly agrees. “I do always,” he says. “I would not go on any stage if I did not enjoy it. Since I live, I'll have to go on stages. It's my life and it's my joy. So why not?”
And what about Kraftwerk, I ask. Where is the joy there?
“You must ask that [to] Ralf, right?” he replies. “He changed… the whole concert changed. It is not that what it was: when the original Kraftwerk was together we had joy on the stage. You can believe me that we felt before [that we were] really good friends and we had also joy in our private lives.
“We did a lot of things together in our intimate time. We had hobbies and we drove our bicycles, we went to dinner, to restaurants. And we were very often in cinemas, [we went] to the movies, so we had fun. But also on the stage they bought more life and more movement, you know, when I played original drums, even if electronic. But that has changed completely since I left the band - and Karl Bartos as well and all the others who've changed.”
It is at this point he suggests Hütter may be lonely, surrounded by band mates who Flür compares to “his robots”. Whether Hütter is lonely or not, I really couldn’t say. And - to be fair - Kraftwerk remains a formidable live act. But what Flür has to say about the group’s gigs - and he reviewed a 2013 Kraftwerk concert for The Quietus in 2013 - rings a bell I wish it didn’t.
“On the stage you see that they have no past together,” he says. “That they can’t think on any situations they had what could be laughable or could be cruel maybe sometimes. Anything, you know, they just were standing, always on the stage and playing tracks they had learned.
Leaving Kraftwerk has led to a creative awakening for Flür, of which Times is the latest evidence. He says that the new album marks a new stage in his style as “a storyteller with electronic music”. “I'm not the best singer but I sing more than on the last album. I also took some lessons, which was fun and it had a good result. So it's more fun for me. In my amateur time, I was always singing, in the choir, in the second voices. In my bands I had also some solo parts when we played British pop music,” he says.
“But not in the Kraftwerk time. I was not asked to sing. And I forgot that a little bit over the years. And then I started my own music with Time Pie, 1997, with an EMI contract, I was only the speaker, a storyteller. More and more I developed: 2015 with the Eloquence album. And the following albums, I had more fun in singing. So that is pretty new this time.”
The other headline news about Times are the collaborations. Magazine 1 already had a stellar list of contributors, including Juan Atkins, Peter Hook, Carl Cox and Midge Ure. But the line up for Times is ridiculous. Hook re-appears, playing on two tracks, Über All and Monday to the Moon, alongside former Daft Punk man Thomas Bangalter; Juan Atkins contributes to Posh; Emile Schult adds lyrics to Planet In Fever and Global Youth, the latter of which also features Yello’s Boris Blank; Anthony Rother collaborates on Property; and so on. (And let’s not forget the important contributions of Peter Duggal; U96, singer Victoria Port, Fabrice Lig and more.)
You get the feeling that Flür is able to attract such incredible guests because A) he was in Kraftwerk. And B) he is a lovely person to be around. I ask his what the secret is to a good collaboration. “Should there be a secret?” he answers, logically. “I mean, I'm friendly with most of them [his collaborators]. That's not a secret. I'm not very young. I'm pretty old. In my life I have met many, many people and with many of them, I got friendly.
“That's my personality. So I don't hate anyone. Mostly I love the people and I like them, at least. So if they are musicians, that's interesting. We talk about music and sometimes we find a common line, a common idea, and it's not difficult to be in a good mood with people.
“I'm not a reserved guy. I'm not introverted. More on the other side, extroverted. I'm an open person and I go with an open hand to someone and speak with him. We have a coffee, or we go go to lunch, and that's all this fun. That's my life and that's my personality. That was my education, for my mother, for my family, my way of being with people.”
The Thomas Bangalter collaboration, for example, happened after the French producer asked Flür for a signed copy of Magazine 1. “He sent me a message on the social media. He had just heard the Magazine 1 album and he was furious about it,” Flür explains. “He said, ‘It's so wonderful. Can I have a signed album? I collect albums but it must be signed personally from you. We love you guys. Without Kraftwerk we would not find our own robot style, being on stage with the helmets, you know. And I love you Wolfgang. And please, can you send me [an album]?’”
After the signed record had arrived chez Bangalter, Flür suggested a collab. “I asked him, ‘Could I invite you to be on a track because I'm just working on the theme, on space, I'm a space fan.’ And he said, ‘Oh I’m also a space fan. I already have an idea, Wolfgang. Maybe you can use it? Give me two days, I must find it. I must not play something new. I think it is exactly what you can maybe use.’
“So he sent me something and it was not really fitting in the musical key. But we changed the key and we corrected it a little bit, with the tempo. But we could very, very much use it in the middle part, together with the bass line of Peter Hook. And it fitted very well.
“So it was a bit of a technical problem. But for this I have my wonderful Peter Duggal, my partner in England. He is the technician of us. I'm more the visionary. And I have the themes, I have the melodies and the lyrics. And Peter is a splendid technician. He can do everything I need and if I have some ideas, they could be so crazy. He said, ‘Give me, give me a day or two and we'll find that.’”
The two Bangalter / Hook tracks - and particular Über All - are perhaps the highlights of Times. Über All is a space-scraping electro number, with a hint of Jean-Michel Jarre’s cosmic melancholy to it, among some of the album’s greatest synth melodies, topped by a sublime key change a little over half way in, when Peter Hook enters doing his glorious Peter Hook, bass-as-melody thing. Monday to the Moon is similar: another electro beat and space feel, this time a little harder, together with a genuinely filthy riff and a nagging vocal hook from Victoria Port.
Among this heavyweight line up of collaborators, Flür describes himself as “a circus director”. “I know the background to build up any stage for the musicians and the colour and which actors appear in my show,” he says. “I would say, as if I was a theatre director, you know, anyway, ‘That works. That is a good concept.’ I'm just a visionary. I have a theme. And I asked the people for their imagination.”
Times is a wonderful album. It sounds a little bit like Kraftwerk because of course it does; but this is Kraftwerk with the brakes off and the corset loosened. Imagine if Kraftwerk decided to lay off the endless audio upgrades and knocked out an album in a month for a laugh; that’s a little bit what Times sounds like: fresh, melodic, silly sometimes and not at all overthought, the sound of inspiration in free flow.
It is the kind of record that sounds like it was immensely fun to make, bearing a lightness of heart that flows through its electronic grooves. “Creating music is fun,” Flür says, towards the end of our conversation. “And then when everything is done [for the album] I fell in a deep hole, you know? And I don't know what to do on the next day.”
Luckily, Flür has both the album release to look forward to and a world tour being lined up, spreading optimism from America to South America. “I have a life to spend,” Flür concludes, after a brilliant 50 minutes of talk. “You know, I want to have fun in my life… Time is running out. I'm 77 now… It's an optimistic way of optimal thinking and handling it. Then it's it's more fun. As I said, it's more fun to compute. I said it's more fun with optimistic way.”
Altered Images
A lot of the images I use on this newsletter are by Alexandra Sans Massó, who is on Instagram, if you like this kind of thing. (As you should.)
Seefeel at Primavera!
Primavera announced the names for Primavera a la Ciutat - its mini-festival within a festival (kind of) - last week and I was incredibly glad to see Seefeel there. It reminded me that I interviewed Mark Clifford the last time the band were in Barcelona, performing Quique at the 2018 Mira festival. This was back in the early EARLY days of Radio Primavera Sound. I might make it into a Line Noise. Also playing at Ciutat: Nilüfer Yanya! Kim Deal! The Jesus Lizard!
Ultra Naté at Sónar!
Sónar dropped 51 new names for its Barcelona 2025 edition last week and one thing really stood out for me: the late-night back to back of Dee Diggs and Ultra Naté, which hits all of my 90s deep house happy places. Also notable on the collaboration front: Skee Mask b2b Actress and a new collaboration between Matthew Herbert and Momoko Gil as Herbert & Momoko. And if you go to Sónar to get emotional, how about a tribute to Ryuichi Sakamoto by Alva Noto and Fennesz?
Some listening
Many great things have come of the US / UK popular music axis, of which Pangaea and Leonce’s new EP is the latest example. The record comprises two tracks: Stuck, which has a rolling, tops-off-for-Junior-Vasquez, New York type vibe - always one of my favourite vibes - all tense and rhythmic; and Dusted, which feels like industrial bass line, with all of the melodic skills for which Pangaea is so celebrated. For full effect take both.
Ichiko Aoba’s new album, Luminescent Creatures, is a stunning piece of work that I have come to with the zeal of the freshly converted. Sonar - which rather fetchingly uses sound navigation as a metaphor for finding human connection amidst the depths of loneliness - is a bruised piano ballad, a lot straighter than much of Aoba’s output, albeit teased around the edges by electronic prickles that make the nerves gently sparkle. Beautifully haunting.
I wanted to talk to Bruce for many reasons; but one of the principle motivations was The Price, his alleged “dance” return that turns out to be a weirded out Glam rock shuffler full of bottle smashes, bass undercurrent, perverted 80s synth riffs and tormented noise, that I still reckon would destroy the right dance floor. The Price is idiosyncrasy as art, with individuality at a premium.
For various reasons, my Monday morning turned a little frantic and distressed around the edges, at which point Sanctuary by Rebekka Karijord, a producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist apparently best known for her film scores, turned up to ease the troubled mind. Sanctuary is not just soothing, it is fascinating too, constructed entirely out of human voices as a meditation on humanity, like O Superman absolutely horizontal on Valium
Things I’ve done
One for the Spanish speakers: Johann and I interviewed the flamenco sensation María Terremoto, whose new album Manifiesto goes hard. You can watch it here.
The playlists
It’s February, a whole stinking month has passed, and I still only have a handful of followers for my best new music of 2025 playlist. Why not lend it some ears? And if that’s not enough, you have my very, very long playlist of the best new (well, it was new at the time) music from the last five years.
Kraftwerk should make more albums. Ralf isn't very nice and has no friends. Really, who cares? Along with Music Non-Stop ending their shows and Ohm Sweet Ohm among other examples of the group's famously humourless humour, maybe you're missing the joke: Kraftwerk long described themselves as 'musik arbeiter', but their output is miniscule? Makes me smile anyway.
There are of course many ways to enjoy the incredible diversity and range of musical creativity we're so privileged to be able to enjoy, however problematic it's also become via streaming's impoverishment of artists. My own experience is exemplified by the two artists I've listened longest to over my life: Miles Davis and Kraftwerk. For the former, it looks like I've over eight days worth of music digitally and I've long lost count of the box sets, CDs, records and bootlegs I own and love. For the latter there are just those eight albums and I listen to them (and the live versions) over and over and never tire of them. Miles? Maximum. Kraftwerk? Minimum. I honestly am happy that there is no more new music from Kraftwerk. I love the delightful closure of the final album, Tour de France, in its exploration and expression of man and machine. Isn't it part of the practise of great art, knowing when to stop?
Yes, of course it's easy to view it as failure, a loss of inspiration, a legacy activity. Or, how about that it's radical, that less really is more? Maybe, just maybe, it functions as critique. Of course, such a suggestion emphasises how partisan I am, but given the pleasure and, yes, joy they've given me, my partners and children since my dad brought home Autobahn in 1974, I'm happy to be :-)
"Imagine if Kraftwerk decided to lay off the endless audio upgrades and knocked out an album in a month for a laugh". Again, who cares? This just sounds like more and remarkably unrealistic carping. I'm sure Wolfgang is a lovely man, but surely it's better to talk about your own work than continue to complain about former colleagues, especially after so many years and already with an autobiography making the same points.
Anyway, apart from the above, I've just heard listened to your interview with Shabaka which was really interesting and informative. Thank you. I'm looking forward to hearing more episodes.