In the seventh installment of Sekret Machine Music, Dimitri and Khalid explore the origins and colossal impact of West German electro-pop pioneers Kraftwerk, including: the looming influence of Karlheinz Stockhausen, the Cologne-based Studio for Electronic Music and its murky entanglements with Cultural Cold War operations, the late 60s rise of ‘krautrock’ and attempts to forge a new organic post-Nazi German identity, the ambiguities around cultural symbolism on 1974’s “Autobahn” and nuclear power on 1975’s “Radioactivity”, the US/UK success of their seminal 1977 album “Trans-Europe Express”, Kraftwerk blowing up on African-American radio stations in the northeast and midwest, leaning into the “robotic” German stereotypes, the gradual introduction of Kraftwerk’s music onto the discotheque dancefloors of the late 1970s, the birth of disco in gay bathhouses, Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer forever marrying synthesizers and disco together with “I Feel Love”, and the strange proto-MAGA rockist culture war that culminated in Chicago’s “Disco Demolition Night” riot of 1979…

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