KARL BARTOS: Elektric Music & Kraftwerk

This month sees the release of the new album from Karl Bartos, former member of electronic trailblazers Kraftwerk. But the synth sound is no more — Bartos' new record is closer to Beatle‑esque Britpop.

It's a commonplace scenario: disillusioned musician leaves established group due to "musical differences." Said musician briefly basks in the shadow of former musical glories, but rapidly disappears into obscurity. There are, of course, occasional exceptions to this unwritten rule — enter Berchtesgarten‑born 45‑year‑old multi‑instrumentalist Karl Bartos, former member of reclusive electronic pioneers Kraftwerk.

"Meine Damen und Herren, Ladies and Gentlemen, heute abend aus Deutschland, die Mensch Maschine — KRRRAFT‑WERRRK!". It's now been eight years since Karl last heard this 'Robo‑Voice'‑driven concert rallying call during five low‑key live dates in Italy at the turn of this decade, which constituted his last public duties with Kraftwerk. Despite co‑Kraftwerk founder Ralf Hütter's oft‑quoted insistence that the objective of the group is one of "working without respite toward the construction of the perfect pop song for the tribes of the global village", the reality — that Kraftwerk had only produced two albums of new material since the early 1980s — was obviously too much for Karl Bartos to bear (1991's The Mix doesn't count, as it featured re‑recorded versions of older songs). Tired of forever awaiting this "perfect" pop song's arrival, Bartos departed what he termed "the best German group ever" in August 1990, and immediately formed Elektric Music (as it was then spelt), initially in collaboration with Lothar Manteuffel from fellow German group Rheingold. Apparently the new recording project was originally going to be called Das Klang Institut [The Institute Of Sound — Middle European Ed], but this was passed over because it sounded too similar to the name of Kraftwerk's Düsseldorf‑based recording studio, Kling‑Klang, where Karl had spent so many late nights during the previous 15 years.

Musique Non‑Stop

Although now happily residing in Hamburg, it's apt that I met Karl on his Düsseldorf 'home turf' (ironically within walking distance of Kling‑Klang) at Skyline Studios, where he was applying the finishing touches to the second Electric Music album, titled simply Electric Music. Given Karl's dissatisfaction with Kraftwerk's inactivity, it's somewhat ironic that Esperanto, Electric Music's debut platter, did not emerge until 1993, three years after the split from Kraftwerk — and it's taken five years — a distinctly Kraftwerkian, though not intentional, concept — for Electric Music to arrive.

But, as Karl amiably reasons, "When I left Kraftwerk, I had to build my own studio. Finally, I found a suitable place, and had to decorate it and make various acoustic treatments which took me almost a year. Then I started composing tracks with my ex‑partner Lothar Manteuffel, who had been a friend of mine from the very early days. When he was in school [Kraftwerk collaborator] Emil Schult was his art teacher, so he was always around. Forming a band with him was an obvious move after Kraftwerk. I did my first record in 1993, and he helped me a lot with that; now I'm doing the second one on my own."

The Sound Of Silence

Given the air of secrecy that enshrouds Kraftwerk and Kling‑Klang, and which has shielded the studio and its occupants from the outside world for so many years, I could not resist asking Karl if he had sneaked any equipment out from the cloistered confines of Kling‑Klang when he left the group.

"Sure. I'm collecting equipment all the time. The most famous thing I brought with me is probably the electronic voice; the so‑called 'Robo‑Voice' from 'The Robots', 'Musique Non‑Stop' and other Kraftwerk tracks. I'm not using it so much now; I've got a little sick of it!".

'Crosstalk' (Electric Music's first single release, from 1992) extensively features this long‑standing Kraftwerk staple. The album track and single 'TV' also sounded very like Kraftwerk: the string sounds are remarkably similar to those heard thoughout Kraftwerk's 1976 groundbreaking effort, Radio‑Activity, and moreover, the sampled voices from around the world and even the album title hint at Ralf Hütter's aforementioned objective of writing the perfect global pop song.

Karl confirmed that this was the intention, agreeing, "I had a lot of ideas when I was in Kraftwerk, and making a song about television was just a continuation of the same idea we had when making a song about radioactivity; that we're now living in an information society. We went through that idea when we made the Radio‑Activity album in the '70s and I thought, 'Well, nowadays it's just television, isn't it?' The lyrics were just headlines, basically; it was written with a very journalistic approach. I had this image of an information society, so I wrote a song like you'd write an article in The Times. Actually, from my viewpoint, this idea of Esperanto being the global language, and mixing elements of other languages to form a new one is what music has always been about. Music is a global language; it's understandable without words."

To all intents and purposes, the Esperanto album cover design (by long‑term Kraftwerk collaborator Emil Schult, who also assisted lyrically) is essentially the old Japanese flag. I had assumed that it signified a connection between the ever‑increasing possibilities for global communication and the influence of Japanese technology. This proved at least partly correct: "Well, you're right," says Karl, " it is an old Japanese flag, and they put it on their warships, but it's even older than that; it just represents the sun. Esperanto means hope, and the best symbol for hope is the sun, because it keeps us alive."

Elektric Becomes Electric

The second, eponymous, Electric Music album.

Karl attributes the delay in producing Esperanto's follow‑up to a number of factors: "After Esperanto, two Mancunian guys — Bernard [Sumner, of New Order fame] and Johnny [Marr, formerly of The Smiths] — came into my life, wanting me to play some percussion tracks on their second Electronic record. I went with them to Manchester and it turned out to be a two‑year project in the end! I've now written nine tracks with them, and it changed my life, in a way. Then I worked with Andy McCluskey of OMD, and we collaborated on his latest tracks. I got married and moved to Hamburg; these things take a little time!".

Of course, the phrase 'it changed my life' has become a bit of a cliché in the pop world; but in Karl Bartos' case, it would appear that the Mancunian influence truly brought about a sea change in the way he made music. It's not just the spelling of the group name that has changed; in every way, the Electric Music album bears little resemblence to its predecessor Esperanto, or indeed Kraftwerk (although the opening cut, 'The Young Urban Professional', does actually date back to Kraftwerk days, having been written in 1986 in New York, when the group were recording Electric Café there). In fact, the content of Karl's new album is much closer to BritPop. Karl explains the reason for the stylistic shift:

"When I worked with Johnny Marr in Manchester, he reminded me that I grew up with guitar playing. It reminded me that I can actually play the guitar, and watching him and how he plays was a big influence on me, because I think he's one of the coolest players around. We became friends, and I decided I should make a guitar record — not just a guitar record by putting some guys together, playing guitars, but a guitar record made using my skills with the computer, with technology, sampling, and sequencing. I wanted to make a real hybrid record. Also, it's got more songs than the last one; I'm not just going for so‑called techno sounds and structures, but real three‑minute pop songs with nice ideas in them."

Swinging '60S

Although it is of course a late '90s recording, with all the technological trappings this entails, lyrically and stylistically Electric Music features some blatant, though admittedly tongue‑in‑cheek, '60s references. For example, the line 'He blew his mind out on a bed' (from 'Shallow Grave', Karl's homage to Danny Boyle's film) bears more than a passing resemblance to John Lennon's 'He blew his mind out in a car' (from The Beatles' 1967 epic, 'A Day In The Life'). And as Karl explains, the lyric to 'The Young Urban Professional' is a little bit like The Beatles' 'Penny Lane': "'In Penny Lane there is a barber taking photographs...' is similar to 'We can see the young professional walking down the avenue...' It's like a snapshot of five minutes in the life of a young urban professional."

Again, these knowing nods to the past are entirely deliberate. Karl: "I grew up on that British and American pop sound — Motown, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, and The Who. I forgot about them in the '70s when I went back to avant‑garde classical composers like Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez and all that musique concrète stuff. In Kraftwerk, I really forgot about pop music — although of course we did do songs like 'The Model' which were in that kind of tradition. Nobody recognised it at the time, but it was still a three‑minute pop song.

"When I met Bernard and Johnny, it really brought me really back to that kind of writing. Before that, for the whole of the '70s until the mid‑'80s, I was only writing on the keyboard; after I'd found a sound. Whereas, now I just sit down with a guitar and play in my garden, and sing. For some reason, this gives me the chance to reach people's hearts musically, whereas with Kraftwerk, we reached them intellectually."

Guitar Bits And Bytes

As Karl intimated earlier, although he is primarily known as an electronic artist by virtue of his Kraftwerk connection, it should come as no surprise to learn that instrumentation‑wise, the new album "is mainly guitars."

Lest fans of Karl's earlier work throw their hands up in horror at the idea of a true electronic pioneer prematurely hanging up his MIDI cables, an illustration of his new‑found working methods should prove reassuring: "There are live guitars, but also a lot of sampled guitars, which I put into the computer step by step. I play a chord and sample it, then play a lot of chords and put them in a row. Or I play in individual notes — C, E, G — in a guitar tuning. A lot of it is played originally, but then cut in pieces later. You get nice results if you have a human feel, and you add some machinery to it. It's like a patchwork or collage. The music is played, sampled, and computerised — the drums, the bass, and the keyboards are all programmed. I mean, in the end, it's all digital anyway. Whether you record a symphony orchestra or just a guitar 'unplugged', if you have it on a CD, it's all bits and bytes, so what can you do?"

I think Kraftwerk isn't really techno music in the way that the term is now used.

Many slower tracks on Electric Music begin with an apparently simple strummed acoustic guitar; although, in keeping with the album as a whole, these parts are often more complicated and densely arranged than might first appear: "The recording technique is very well‑known, but nobody does it because it's really time‑consuming. It's actually three types of guitars, and I layer them. You put a chord into a MIDI sequencer in the way a guitar player would voice it, not like a keyboard player. So for a C Major chord, the top string would be E, the next C, the next one G, and so on. If you follow that path, you have a guitar voicing.

"The next thing I do is sample the guitar C chord twice; the down stroke and up stroke. Then I sequence the whole song using that technique — and play along to that, live. I end up with this very strange feel that nobody can work out — is it artificial, or is it real? To me, it's like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. They look so damn real, you're frightened when you see them, but you know they're artificial. I'm really after that hybrid style."

It's More Fun To Compute

Although the initial stage of Bartos' recordings now seems to primarily involve samplers rather than synths, traditional keyboards have not been entirely forsaken; Karl reveals his fondness for the sound of the Mellotron (though he actually uses samples of the original instruments, which he recorded himself), Wurlitzer pianos, Hammond organs and Theremins, amongst others.

"I always come back to my Minimoog and ARP Odyssey. I've still got them and they're collecting dust, but they're still working. Their sound is still not dated if you know how to twist them a little. The Minimoog is a nice instrument that looks good; a little like a Rickenbacker guitar.

"I've got lots of Akai samplers, but they're just like blank sheets of paper which you can fill with any sound you like. I'm also using Akai DR16 digital recorders and Logic Audio software, but I didn't use that on the new album; I programmed everything on my little Yamaha C1 music computer, which is still working. It's dated and slow, but I don't care because it's very reliable and the result is fantastic. It has eight MIDI outputs and built‑in SMPTE, but they didn't continue with it, unfortunately. It was the predecessor of all this Logic Audio and Cubase stuff, because now they've all copied this concept of having a score and a time window."

Sadly, the use of tried and tested technology like the Yamaha C1 did nothing to alleviate some truly tedious MIDI and audio synchronisation problems. Karl ruefully comments: "It was a nightmare. You know, there are all these interfaces and synchronisers, but if you upgrade to the next generation you can forget everything you've done before, because the offset is so different. We got locked in that trap when playing stuff back from tape using a different interface after the original broke down and got sent away for repair. We had to re‑adjust the offset on every track if we wanted to add more parts. This was really time‑consuming, and I'll never do it again! The problem should be solved by a technology that's been around for a year or so now called word clock, which seems to be great. If you have long digital samples, like a vocal track, within Logic Audio, it will lock up tight as a straitjacket."

Hamburg Is Where The Heart Is

Kraftwerk in 1978. Left to right: Florian Schneider, Ralf Hütter, Wolfgang Flur, Karl Bartos.

Both Esperanto and Electric Music were recorded in commercial studios, Heartbeat in the case of the former and Skyline (whose client list includes such luminaries as ELO, Die Krupps, Propaganda and Karl's fellow ex‑Kraftwerk member Wolfgang Flur, with his new YAMO project) for the latter. However, pre‑production for the new album took place elsewhere: in Frankfurt, where Karl went to "a friend's studio to record really loud, screaming guitars and feedback", and at his Hamburg home: "All the vocal tracks were recorded at my place — in my library, actually. It was really nice to look out of a window, with no studio atmosphere. I'm now building a really good 48‑track digital studio at home where I can achieve almost anything."

Karl's new 'home' studio is simply based around a small Mackie console, his samplers, a pair of speakers, plenty of different guitar amps, and, of course, his DR16s. "The main thing I need is a digital machine where I can store all the recorded tracks; for this reason the Akai DR16 is incredible. It's hard‑disk based and reliable; a cheap, high‑quality workhorse. It's small, so you can easily take it and record in other places. You can also easily expand it by another 16 tracks by buying another machine. For me, 48 tracks makes a lot of sense at the moment."

With noble sentiments like, "I'm just a musician, not a technician. I couldn't say how an engine works in a car, but I can drive one," Karl is evidently not one for blowing his own trumpet technically. Yet with over 20 years of professional recording under his belt, he's perfectly capable of navigating the modern recording studio with ease...

"We recorded a lot of ambience in the live room. For example, we sent the whole electronic drum kit through there and recorded the ambience with different microphones, which adds a subtle texture. We also sent the sound of a sampled piano into a real grand piano, pressed down its sustain pedal and recorded the resultant overtones. It sounds much more real that way. So there was a lot of re‑recording involved in the new album, but it was worth it."

Music For Boys (& Girls, Too)

With many younger musicians increasingly ignoring the creative possibilities of the miking techniques employed by Karl, some might argue that a great deal of yesteryear's engineering skill is now irrelevant — after all, if you want weird sounds, you can always reach for a sample CD. Perhaps the prevalence of this outlook explains Karl's slightly scathing attitude towards the distinctive sounds which assisted in Kraftwerk's rise to fame — and his belief that the sounds he's now using have a more universal appeal. "You know, what's got me a little bit down with so‑called electronic music is that now it's all around us. The first 10 positions in the charts are always filled with crap techno sounds. They're so over‑used that I can't really work with those sort of sounds anymore; I'd rather invent my own. The Prodigy are a cool band, and they are using samples all the time as the basis of their sound, but at the moment, I personally wouldn't do this; it's like wearing somebody else's used underwear! I like creating something from scratch."

"On the new record, I did start by playing the tracks into the sequencer, like I used to do in Kraftwerk, but they turned out to be very electronic and '80s‑sounding. Then I discovered this method with layering guitars that I was talking about earlier. As soon as I put a guitar on there, it changed. It evolved from a so‑called techno track into something which girls could also relate to. I researched this with my wife."

You might raise an eyebrow at this, but Karl is at least 50 percent serious. "One of the main drawbacks with electronic music in the past was that it somehow seemed to only appeal to boys. I think it's a technical attraction thing. Guys are turned on by motorcycles or cars, and it's the same with electronic music. But as soon as soon as you put some guitars on it, girls think it's more accessible and human! Anyway, that's the sound I'm after now. Also, if you put guitars on a track, you don't have to worry about the mid‑range. You don't have to think about filling it out or creating unusual rhythms like in hip‑hop music, or whatever. You just have a really structured, singalong song, immediately. I'm already writing new songs. If I'm sitting around with nothing to do for an hour or two, I find myself sitting there with the guitar, strumming along and voila! — there's a new song."