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Author Uwe Schütte first heard Kraftwerk as a car-sick nine-yearold, appropriately enough on the autobahn in his native Germany. The band then intermittently fitted in and out of his life, until a lifelong allegiance was cemented at a Brixton Academy gig in 2004. Since then, the Reader in German at Aston University has organised a brace of sell-out academic conferences about the band, one in Brum, the other in Düsseldorf, Kraftwerk’s home city. All of which means Schütte is very well placed to offer up his treatise on the electronic pioneers, and he expertly traces the cultural context of the band, and their evolution from the art scene in Düsseldorf to global influencers. Kraftwerk are the real deal as far as he is concerned, fusing music with technology, graphic design and performance – he even argues that it is unlikely we will ever see an addition to the discography, as a ninth studio release would “wreck the Gesamtkunstwerk that is the octology of the Catalogue-complex”. And who are we to argue with that?