100 stars! Incredible, groundbreaking, original German innovators who pioneered and popularized electronic music and gave it a mechanized, antiseptic but playful sound that was considered way hip before anyone else dared to. Kraftwerk are considered THE most influential worldwide electronic artists, with Vangelis perhaps a close second. "MUSIQUE NON STOP... TECHNO POP!!!!!!"

Can I give them 6 stars? I am an efficianado of electronica and have to just say...If you don't recognize the magnitude of what these guys have contributed to this form of music, you don't know enough about them. Next time you get a chance to listen to Computerwelt, check out the date of when it was recorded. If you are old enough to have been around when they recorded Autobahn, you have to know they were seemingly in a time machine recording electronic music in the 70's that sounds as though it could easily have been layed down this century. Their music is innovative, inspiring, smart, waaaaay ahead of it's time and fun.

They were very good, but were no where near as excellent as New Order.

Not only were Kraftwerk likely the most influential band in the history of electronic music but also one of the most influential bands in modern music, period. In my opinion they are at least as important as Elvis and the Beatles. Kraftwerk released three experimental art-rock oriented albums before their first truly electronic outing on the epic Autobahn. The 22 minute title track was an eclectic gem and also, a worldwide hit. They followed this success with such albums as the pulsating Trans-Europe express (the title track incidentally was sampled for use on literally hundreds of rap records, Grandmaster Flash and Afrikka Bombatta admit a strong influence), the chilling Man-Machine (The track The Model effectively provided inspiration for the entire romantic/New Wave movement), the fast paced Computer world (The pulsing rhythms were practically unknown at the time and this effected what would evolve into techno, house and a host of other sub-genres) and finally Electric Cafe. By the time Electric Cafe came out the masters seem to have finally been overtaken by their students presenting nothing massively inspired. After this disappointing outing half of the most famous line-up (Wolfgang Flur and Karl Bantos) left the band leaving only the core of the group (Ralf Hutter and Florian Schnieder) who released only a compilation mix CD of their work in 1991 and the single Expo 2000 in 1999 afterwards. Recently they have finally returned with Tour De France 2003, an album of all new material which proved the original masters could still keep pace with the now frenetic tempo of modern electronic music whilst keeping the same distinctive Feel that their music has had for 30 years. That self-created feel is what I've always liked about Kraftwerk, their reclusive nature and their desire to create an image of themselves that is actively symbolic of their music: a world of living mannequins, spacelabs and robots. They shun interviews and other conventions which may show their human side, preferring to shield themselves with wire-framed costumes, hiding behind huge pieces of equipment in performances, distracting the audience with elaborate light shows. This incapsulates Kraftwerk perfectly, less of a band and more an entity, as they would say: man and machine in perfect harmony.