Even before a single note of Kraftwerk's eight-night residency at London's Tate Modern is struck, the harmonics are fabulous. Early gigs by these German electronic pioneers routinely took place in art galleries, emphasising the band's conceptual distance from American rock music. In those days, their Düsseldorf recording studio, known as Kling Klang, was next to Gerhard Richter's art studio and they all used to have kickabouts with Joseph Beuys.
Tonight, 40-odd years later, Kraftwerk find themselves in a gallery again, one that used to be a power station, which is what Kraftwerk means in German. If Ralf Hütter – the only remaining founder member – looks mildly amused throughout the first two evenings of this enthralling residency, that's because he is.
Whenever Hütter looks up, an indoor hill of 1,000 people wearing 3D glasses greets him, and surround-sound speakers ping his music around the Turbine Hall (quite something, when Radio-Activity's frankly awesome Voice of Energy growls, like a malevolent ghost in the machine). It's hard to tell, but Hütter seems to be in charge of melodies and organ sounds, intoning words into a headset, his veneer of impassivity compromised when The Model – unbelievably, Kraftwerk's sole chart-topping hit – makes him jig his head slightly. At the end of Computer Love on Thursday night, there is even a smile. Although each night is devoted to a specific album, both Autobahn (Catalogue 1, Wednesday) and Radio-Activity (Catalogue 2, Thursday) open with Kraftwerk's theme tune, The Robots, and end with a slew of crowd-pleasers. The atmosphere is reverential – too reverential, even, given Kraftwerk inspired such a large fistful of loud and sweaty genres: electro, hip-hop, techno. By the time the chronology of their hits winds round to Computer Love, though, Kraftwerk are emitting pretty up-to-date digital chirps and whirrs and a brave few are dancing.
To Hütter's right stand three more bodysuited-suited music-workers of various vintages, "Mensch-Maschines" operating identical neon-lit workstations and displaying variations on male pattern baldness. The tension between their manliness (those suits are very tight) and their machine-liness (efficient solemnity) is one of the things that make Kraftwerk – even this Kraftwerk 6.0 – such a hoot. They are as camp as they are conceptual, a retro-futurist nostalgia act who remain too wonderful to sneer at, even as they peddle revamps of their back catalogue, and rumours of new material drift perennially on the wind. All-too-human tribulations have long surrounded these flawed automatons. There have been multiple fallings out, even lawsuits to attempt to prevent the publication in 2000 of I Was a Robot, former member Wolfgang Flür's memoir. But their sly humour remains one of Kraftwerk's most enduring suits.
You have to hope, at least, that Kraftwerk are in on the joke of their own graphics. As much a part of these gigs as the music, the 3D stuff flying at you is a hugely entertaining spectacle. A satellite attacks during Spacelab; notes and words tumble out into the audience. But all these visuals are hilariously basic, given the current sophistication of the medium, spurred by film and gaming. Funniest of all is Autobahn, in which a vintage VW pootles along, a badly drawn hand tuning its cartoon car radio, while an old-fashioned Mercedes threatens to overtake (and finally does).
Humour is only one of Kraftwerk's functions, though. Awe is another. Radio-Activity, the title track of their 1975 album, began its life-and-a-half as a paean to technological progress. Over the years, however, it has been repurposed as a warning against nuclear folly. For the past couple of years, Kraftwerk have been playing a remix with lyrics in Japanese whose climax is the resounding word "FUKUSHIMA" glowing in black and white, at once chilling and compassionate.
Their emotional clout is undeniable. Pristine songs such as Neon Lights are desperately sad as well as shiny, and Tour de France makes competitive cycling appear a heroic pursuit once again, in the wake of Lance Armstrong's disgrace.
These first two nights, however, beam a laser at Kraftwerk's nuts and bolts: their lesser-known album-track sound experiments. Unbelievably, this may be only the third time that the deepest workings of Autobahn and Radio-Activity – tracks such as Intermission and Uranium – have ever been played live.
Of the two, the Autobahn album emerges as more cogent. A comet approaches, and night turns into morning, complete with achingly beautiful faux-birdsong, originally played both on flutes and primitive keyboards, and now reproduced by laptop. Kometenmelodie 2 chugs along blithely, while Morgenspaziergang is just exquisite. By contrast, Radio-Activity is more austere and bitty, punningly divided between nuclear power and popular music dissemination.Still, Antenna is an unexpectedly cheery motorik vamp.
It's quite difficult to overstate exactly how far ahead of their time Kraftwerk were in the 70s. They remain almost ridiculously exciting. Equally, though, examined deeply, as these nights do, Kraftwerk's music is hugely comforting: full of churchy organs and an almost childlike sense of wonder.
