Kraftwerk: Manchester, Apollo – Live Review

Kraftwerk
O2 Apollo, Manchester
May 22nd 2026

On the first of two dates in Manchester as part of their first UK tour nearing a decade, the Apollo experiences Kraftwerk doing what they have always wanted to – play some catchy pop songs. In this way, the group that gave the world everything have come full circle, with their visionary intellect still unbridled. By Ryan-Lewis Walker.

”It could be all on tape, that.”

So states a fellow punter exiting Manchester’s Apollo. We’ve both just witnessed the same group. Yet, and this is part of the charm, our experiences of that band are offset by a unique series of differences.

The band in question is Kraftwerk. The pioneering proto-techno scientists who gave New Order the choirs from heaven (or hell). The band that Joy Division used to play before they took to the stage. The band that joined up Detroit with Düsseldorf.

With a line-up featuring founding father Ralf Hütter, Georg Bongartz, Henning Schmitz and Falk Grieffenhagen, the group experienced tonight, on the first of two Manchester dates as part of their UK tour, doesn’t need to succumb to some trite, mythological contrivance so heavily embedded in the blood of the music industry – the myth band members are the defining feature of a group.

With the late Florian Schnieder departing in 2008, with Karl Bartos and Wolfgang Flür leaving in 1990 and 1987, respectively, the men, and the machines (or the machines, with their men) stand just as solitary as they would if the OG line-up remained intact. In Kraftwerk’s eyes, the mission must still be undertaken and completed regardless of departure. Regardless of death.

Kraftwerk were always a band about putting their finger on the pulse of the moment, a few beats before it cracked apart on an international scale. Immeasurably revered albums such as Autobahn (1974), Radio-Activity (1976, this month celebrating its 50th year), Trans-Europe Express (1977), The Man-Machine (1978), and Computer World (1981) was their method of pinning everything down with precise, prescient detail. It was their way of speaking about the present day, whilst also securing their places as the cyber-sages for a future they saw coming decades ago.

This is why they don’t concede to the notion of giving in when, for various reasons, members leave. Ego is disposable. Components of flesh and bone is one small fragment of the entire arrangement of the factory-shaped universe that Kraftwerk comes from. The songs have to be played. Because people have to hear them. A folk idea, and a utopian one at that, of connecting audiences far and wide to a view that can all be shared via the spirit of these tantalising, time-immune tracks. The present is too lazy to look in the mirror. Too self-conscious to laugh. The future won’t predict itself. It flattens out of stagnation.

This is also why Kraftwerk don’t need to put out any new music. Does anything else need to be said that hasn’t already? Do we actually need to add anything else to the catalogue without stepping on the toes of previous peaks of genius? Why bother? It’s not a case of smearing the legacy. Its more a case of the inferiority of repeating themselves. An unnecessary move when everything is so securely sealed in, suspended in a perfect, sacrosant location.

As anything that happens in society is immediately commented on in their work, likewise, anything in their work is reflected in society. Its a synergy only Kraftwerk have manipulated to their will. Randomly descend a finger anywhere in culture, and you’ll surely find its parallel in a Kraftwerk track, ever the conceptual pop architects, spies at their desks, agents overlooking the world from their illuminated plinths. Nothing new can be predicted that hasn’t been predicted and emerged into public view before. They are comfortable in the knowledge that no matter the state of the world around their albums, the songs remain untarnished. Just pop songs. That’s how far they have come.

But tonight’s pop songs speak of something that only Kraftwerk can execute. That suffusing of melodic drama from the dark side of the warehouse to the greatest technological, sociological and political challenges of the era. That enmeshment of rhythmic and bass magic from the sexiest depths of the underground with the goofy humour to appeal to everybody and encourage disparate generations to kiss at an interchange in a spiritual metropolis.

Take the teeth-tingling, throbbing buoyancy and steel-worm melodies of Computer World, and note the recent hack of hundreds of millions of students’ data, stolen and with ransom as an answer. How about the ominous electro-dirge of The Man Machine, all escalating vocoder doom and unsettling, synth signals crackling with mechanical alchemy? Try the contentious state of AI in relation to human behaviour and an insatiable reliance over its capabilities, helping the species discover a Nobel-prize worthy discovery, or wiping the slate clean until all that stands are empty houses and a humming archive of hard drives. And with the ethereal, near-hymnal surge of Radioactivity, fifty years old this month – nor entirely about radio communication, or, other than our own now ubiquitous pocket calculators, entirely about humankind’s second greatest achievement in the power plant, consider the drone strike that cut off external power to a station in the UAE. An attack that didn’t cause much damage by way of nuclear spillage – but still calls into question the ease at which a vital site of the Barakah centre could be penetrated and unleash potential pandemonium.

The best moments are when the tunes are extended past their original parameters and are allowed to freely drift into regions of laser-beam techno. This is when Kraftwerk ‘let loose’. A molten moment where the machines momentarily unlock the shackles from the conveyor belt and bust some shapes on the dancefloor as the tunes melt and morph into enveloping excursions of searing, electronic heat. With no backdrop, just dim silhouette- black on black, Radioactivity is introduced with a touching tribute to Ryuichi Sakamoto by playing a rendition of Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (Sakamoto wrote new the lyrics for Radioactivity with a focus on the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011). The song itself burns up with intense, industrial techno energy. Armour-plated, elastic, menacing and taut. Likewise, the sonic sunset of Neon Lights, the concrete-cutting thrust of Airwaves and the sweat-on-steel gyrations of Tour de France echo and explode with dusty, minimal techno dreamscapes and intense rave workout. Their 2020 remixes album is brought to life, and along with it, the theatre follows.

These are the times we live in. The times that Kraftwerk could see coming. Where we look to next is still up to them. By which point, it really could all be on tape and all that.

~

Kraftwerk | Website 

Words by Ryan-Lewis Walker, his author profile is here

Photos by Andrew Twambley. You can find Andrew at his website