Electro - From Kraftwerk to Techno
by Vittorio Compagno for the Carl Kruse Blog Looking at Dusseldorf, a city with less than 1 million inhabitants, one may only think about the modern architecture, the fashion industry, or its art scene. What many people don’t realize, it’s that the city was the center of a cultural revolution that took place in all of West Germany. In an attempt to create a new identity for their nation, the best of the German intelligentsia drifted away from a 25-year middle period of American influence, creating a counterculture movement that rode the wave of the demonstrations that took place in the 60's throughout the Western world. At the center of the German avant-garde movement was a band that formed in 1969: Kraftwerk . Their name, which means “Power Station”, is an indicator of the inspiration of the group to industrial design, with an important contribution of the gone but not forgotten Bauhaus. Their style, inspired at the beginning by industrialism, shifted towards the well