Nostalgic Futurism & Kraftwerk

Watching the Kraftwerk DVD Minimum-Maximum and Modulations got me thinking about the development of electronic music over the past thirty or so years. Kraftwerk were such a pioneering band back in the 1970s, a band that pretty much invented the sound of techno. And yet, after listening to their music now and watching their DVD again, I realised that their sound is actually quite dated. This is, of course, part of the charm of songs like Home Computer, Pocket Calculator, Computer Love, Trans-Europe Express etc. But it also called to mind other techno pioneers like Derrick May, Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson who defined the sound in the '80s with the familiar warm analogue synths associated with the Detroit sound. Nowadays, these synths sound dated (not necessarily in a bad way), but they continue to be used, invoking nostalgia for an interpretation of the future that is decades old. Considering the clip we watched today in the lecture (Home Computer by Kraftwerk), with its use of filters that exaggerate the pixellated nature of the television/computer screen, Kraftwerk seem to exemplify dated-futurism (even if their theories remain perpetually relevant). Pocket Calculator is perhaps an even better example, with the band extracting electronic tones from a primitive example of the titular device. Kraftwerk's sound, as well as their pixellated visual aesthetic, revels in an aesthetic of the future that is as dated as that of 1950s science fiction comics or the 'Futurism' art movement of the 1920s and '30s. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. Perhaps this creates a kind of Verfremdungseffekt, augmenting the alien sound of electronic music and encouraging the listener to consider the music intellectually as well as aesthetically.