Kraftwerk Uncovered – A Future Past

Following their highly successful, 14 date Apollo tour, Icebreaker turned their focus on another contemporary icon – Kraftwerk. Since their formation in 1970 the group’s output has revolutionised music and influenced scores of musicians.

For this project, composer, producer and sound-scapist J. Peter Schwalm used tracks from a range of Kraftwerk albums to show off the group’s many different sounds – from early acoustic tracks to the by now iconic synthesized tunes.

Visual artist Sophie Clements and Toby Cornish created a new video work for this piece. A purposeful departure from the high-tech graphics of the current Kraftwerk shows, Clements and Cornish re-present Kraftwerk’s vision in the language of an earlier era of avant garde film that wondered in the new aesthetics of technological and industrial innovation. A nostalgic vision of a ‘future’ now passed, and a modern reworking of a lost utopian dream.