Kraftwerk played Boch Center – 3/11
German electronic trailblazers Kraftwerk brought their 2025 “Multimedia” tour to Boston last week.
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Much like the insistent rhythms of their songs and the machines that inhabit them, Kraftwerk just keep ticking. Formed 55 years ago as an experimental rock outfit by instrumentalists Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, the project would evolve into one of the all-time definitive electronic music acts, influencing swaths of artists in basically every genre imaginable for the decades to come. Though they haven’t produced new music since 2003, Kraftwerk have remained active as a sort of live archival entity, periodically taking a 3-D stage show or full-album residency series on the road. Last year marked the big 5-0 for the band’s komische opus Autobahn, which set up a prime opportunity to dust off those podiums and glow suits for another trek in 2025.
Kraftwerk’s current iteration, still fronted by Hütter with the help of three compatriots of varying longevity, have dubbed this run their “Multimedia” tour – a descriptor you could accurately apply to any of the group’s exhibitions in recent memory. Immersive visuals tuned to each song, from the computer-code onslaught of “Numbers” to the travelogue of Autobahn‘s majestic title track, have long been a key part of the Kraftwerk experience, and this undertaking is no different.
Absent the 3-D glasses integral to past few tours, the sights of Tuesday’s show did feel sharpened and updated in places, though if you’re wondering how much the experience felt changed up overall, the answer is…not terribly. Indeed, for a repeat customer of the band’s last two North American tours, much of “Multimedia” did feel familiar. “Numbers” segued to the joys of “Computer World,” a suite of Tour De France Soundtracks rode with a quickened techno pulse, “Geiger Counter” -> “Radioactivity” churned with an unnerving undercurrent of doom, and earmworm synthpop gems like “The Model” punctuated the headier material. Even as the show promised to mark Autobahn‘s 50th, none of that record’s deeper cuts made an appearance to shake things up.
For a group whose aesthetic plays into the enigmatic and android-like nature of its members though, perhaps reinvention is beside the point at this stage of their career. Kraftwerk has, in a sense, fulfilled a prophecy that “The Robots” suggested back in 1978, becoming a machine in and of itself that produces a streamlined show like clockwork each night. Having now seen Hütter and company on three occasions over the past decade, it’s remarkable how compelling said show remains, even without an element of surprise. So much of the extended universe of electronic music traces its roots back to Kraftwerk, and yet seeing them remains a singular, unreplicated spectacle. I’m still a repeat customer anytime.
Check out a gallery from the evening below.
