My First Live Show — Kraftwerk

　For a little over thirty years, I went through life without really understanding what it meant to go to a live show.

　Maybe precisely because I love music, I always felt it was better to listen alone at home. That shared, collective pleasure of moving your body together with a crowd of strangers never sat right with me, so I kept avoiding it, vaguely, until now.

　The music I listen to regularly is basically Kraftwerk and YMO. After moving to Tokyo, I kept thinking, YMO will probably do one more live show someday. Before I knew it, though, only Hosono-san was left.

　I had always assumed that one day I’d go to a live show by one of them, and finally understand what it meant for everyone to enjoy the same music together in the same moment.

　So this time, when Kraftwerk came to Japan, I had already decided I’d go even if I had to crawl there.

　In reality, of course, all I had to do was apply for a ticket, pick it up at the convenience store, and get on a train—hardly something that required crawling across the ground. The only regret was that Aiobahn, who had been looking forward to it just as much as I had, ended up unable to come because of work. He kept messaging me, saying how frustrated he was. This might well have been the last chance to see Kraftwerk in Japan.

　So cool.

　There were even a few fans wearing red shirts and black ties.

　Even though it was my first live experience ever, I instantly understood that Kraftwerk was something different.

　Glowing suits like something out of Faiz. Huge fluorescent visuals filling the screen. An audience that didn’t sway side to side, didn’t wave glowsticks, and simply stood there in silence, listening.

　Surrounded by rows of 0s and 1s, with COMPUTER WORLD displayed boldly across the screen.

　This simplicity is German art. More than that, the quiet presence of it all makes history spill out from them: these are the people who built techno in the first place.

　One, two, three, four.

　Together with hundreds of other people, I watched music that was, at its core, just numbers being read aloud in different languages. Just standing there, still. Immersed in the art, drowning in psychedelic colors.

　I was moved by the power of visuals that had absolutely no waste in them.

　The ability to carry through this kind of staging so completely is backed by fifty years of weight. They aren’t deliberately depicting retro aesthetics and pushing forward with them—it’s simply that this is the shape of the path they themselves created, accumulated over time.

　Because Kraftwerk turned the pleasant beeps of calculators and computers into music, the present exists.

　Their bold use of line and color made me think of Gerhard Richter.

　This is German art.

　How beautiful it is.

　I'm the operator

　With my pocket calculator

　By pressing down a special key

　It plays a little melody

　When I was a child, I spent so much time just pressing buttons on calculator-like devices and playing around. There’s something so wonderful in the way Kraftwerk turns that kind of childlike feeling into music. Pocket Calculator is one of my favorite Kraftwerk songs.

　In this strange space, everyone quietly offered applause to giant calculators and cheap CG computers, and surrendered themselves to the beep-tones. And after the show, when everyone finally stood up and sent Kraftwerk off with huge applause, it felt like gratitude offered to art itself.

　No glowsticks. No call-and-response. Barely any vocals, really.

　Just watching giant computers and text on the screen, and beneath them, silently gazing at glowing old men standing still.

　That was my first live experience, and without question, one of the most psychedelic and pleasant times of my life.

　I love Kraftwerk!!!

　Runner-up: those deafening Pink Floyd screening events.

【爆音上映】ピンク・フロイド - The Dark Side Of The Moon｜nyalra

少し前のことですが、ピンク・フロイドの爆音上映へ行きました。ピンク・フロイドの静けさと爆音上映なる現代的な概念が繋がらず、しかもプラネタリウムで行われることで混乱しましたが、結果的にとても良かっ...

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