The co-founder of the pioneer group of electronic music Kraftwerk, the German Florian Schneider-Esleben, died at the age of 73 from cancer, one of the managers of the group. " Florian Schneider died of dazzling cancer just days after his 73rd birthday, " Alexandra Greenberg told AFP, quoting remarks from other Kraftwerk founder Ralf Hütter.
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The collaboration between the two musicians began in 1968 before they founded two years later in Düsseldorf, a city in the west of Germany, Kraftwerk. Born in the industrial Ruhr area, this group intended to develop a typically German music, marrying their mother tongue with the sounds of big cities, against the Anglo-Saxon pop brought by the occupying troops.
Precursors
His music, combining haunting bass, synthesizer pads and drum machine, has won over audiences and many artists, from David Bowie to Daft Punk. The distortion of voices to the “ vocoder ”, the group's trademark, has become a classic. Their words, in German then in Spanish, Russian, Polish or Japanese, also made them pioneers: from the 1970s, they revolved around the omnipresence of machines and the growing role of technology in everyday life.
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Avant-garde group and influential actor of contemporary art, Kraftwerk will chain world successes with its titles Autobahn (1974), Radio-Aktivität (1975), Trans Europa Express (1977), Die Mensch-Maschine (1978) or even Tour From France (2003). Florian Schneider left the group at the end of 2008. In 2014, he received a Grammy Award, an award given each year in the United States to honor the best artists in the field of music, for the work of their lives.