Kraftwerk News

Yas may derive its name from the rendering of singer and lyricist Yasmine Hamdan's first name in Roman letters, but she and collaborator Mirwais Ahmadzai would undoubtedly delight in the obvious parallel American listeners are sure to draw to the storied New Wave group known as Yaz in North America.

When Air's Moon Safari came out in 1998, I was 15 years old and still in my teenage ska/punk phase.

'Model' hitmakers Kraftwerk are not worried about getting older and still plan to record a new album.

IT was at a party in 1970 that Ralf Hutter first glimpsed the potential power of the Man Machine.

Nitzer Ebb , pioneers of EBM , proved they've still got the beat, rocking out with boundless energy at the Mod Club on Tuesday night.

Stumped for what to buy your friends and family this year? Forget the socks and chocs and bubble bath a ' our critics have chosen 40 of the best music, film and TV box sets Billie Holiday: treat someone to the box set this Christmas.

Beyonc and Lady Gaga , two of the most forward-thinking ladies in pop music today, decided to get together and record a jam about a favorite gadget of theirs.

Fashion moves in cycles where old becomes new again, and so it is that electronic music from the 1980s and 90s has become the latest fashion at Sofia's Yalta Club.

If HAL 9000 mated with R2-D2 and their electronic offspring was tutored by Kraftwerk it would probably end up something like the Bliptronic 5000 LED Synthesizer.

Cold Cave seems as if it was dutifully engineered to be a machine able to create electronic music almost devoid of emotion.

In the age of the single download, Jeff Harford rediscovers the album . . . While 1974's Autobahn marks the moment Dusseldorf band Kraftwerk fully integrated its human elements with the machinery of electronic music, 1977's Trans-Europe Express presents the most engaging aspects of the hybrid personality that emerged.

Ghosts and Their Machines Yeah, Ghostland Observatory use synths and samples. But don't expect them to stand around twiddling knobs Ever since Bob Dylan plugged in, pop music has turned a wary eye toward drive-by-wire music powered by electricity, circuitry or digital wizardry.

This Fab Four, from DA1 4sseldorf rather than Liverpool, created an entire musical genre with their pioneering sound.

Some would credit Europe with this thing we call electronic dance music by pointing back to the pioneering work of Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder and Can.

Brian Eno once said that only 100 people bought Velvet Underground records when they were first released, but those hundred people all went out and formed their own bands.

New album By a Thread Artist: Gov't Mule Evil Teen Records 4 stars out of 5 'By A Thread' is a bit of a return to form for Gov't Mule.

At the dark end of disco and funk in the early 1980s a DJ and crew known as Afrika Bambaataa had wild, sweaty, drunken sex with the emotionless zombie robot corpse of school-of-Bauhaus German synthpop unit Kraftwerk and an unholy thousand-headed monster rose from the undead to groove across the land.

It's Friday a ' and our experts are here to tell you how to get the most out of your weekend.

Simple Minds and OMD will appear on stage together for the very first time when they perform Kraftwerk's "Neon Lights" on their forthcoming UK tour which kicks off at the Newcastle Metro Arena on 30th November.

Barry Murphy returns once more to trawl the TV and radio guides , finding anything worth tuning into this week.