Legendary electronic music group Kraftwerk has returned to the road this spring and brought their Multimedia Tour to a packed house at the Orpheum Theatre in Phoenix this week. The reportedly haunted venue was the perfect home for this tour as the quartet dazzled and amazed their audience with classic songs backed by mesmerizing visuals for the full sensory experience.
Their large LED screen counted down the seconds to the group taking the stage, immediately jumbling the “Numbers” as part of a medley that included “Computer World” and “Computer World 2”. Kraftwerk is known across the world for their pioneering of the electronica genre and showed off their legacy and impact with songs that have been sampled in the many decades since the group’s inception. “Spacelab” took the room to the outer reaches of the great beyond before coming back down to earth for “Autobahn”.
The seated theatre stayed seated, soaking in the layered sounds and visual landscape playing out in front of them (although several ushers were spotted dancing in the back of the room to the familiar sounds from their youth). The quartet, for their part, rarely looked up at the audience as they focused on crafting each song while their matching suits lit up to accompany each new color scheme.
Their “Tour de France” medley garnered whoops and cheers after several minutes of interwoven soundscapes before the set closed with “Trans-Europe Express”, “Planet of Visions” and a dream mashup of “Boing Boom Tschak”, “Techno Pop” and “Musique Non Stop”. Each member left one at a time, bowing to a stunned audience before calmly leaving the stage as the final notes rang out.
They weren’t quite done with Phoenix, however, and those trying to leave were immediately brought back through the theatre doors at the opening to “The Robots”. Now that people were on their feet, there was plenty of dancing to the electronic classic to close out an incredible night. An unbelievable amount of music has been influenced by Kraftwerk’s discography- from samples in rap music to modern EDM, the group has had a lasting impact on the genre and culture as a whole. That effect was clear on the faces of fans leaving the room after such an immersive show experience- this tour is certainly not one to be missed.
