If you don’t have the attention span for the documentary, maybe you should just get the unrelated Kling Klang iPhone app.

If by chance you spent any time in a nightclub in the last thirty years, there’s a fairly good chance that you owe what your feet were doing either directly or indirectly to the band Kraftwerk. From their early experimental work that led to the more commercial Autobahn and Radio-Activity in the mid 70′s, right through their infectious and often re-mixed machine pop of the 80′s, Kraftwerk’s music helped shape the entire Punk/alternative waves of the 70′s and 80′s. In part by helping inspire Bowie and Eno to move to Berlin, and in part by creating the basic template for the sounds of tunes like Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” and bands and artists like Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, and Human League, to name just a few. And it’s probably safe to say that entire genres – like techno, industrial, and house – would not later even exist if it weren’t for Kraftwerk’s innovations in electronic pop and dance music. Hell, without Kraftwerk, Sprockets itself would be impossible. And then whose monkey would we touch? I’m stating the obvious here, mostly for any ignorant young hipsters reading that haven’t pieced these facts together yet. My own experience with Kraftwerk began as a teen, being transported to alternate realities by the sonic landscapes of tunes like “Autobahn” (with perhaps a little neurochemical assistance), which inspired me to become a fairly obsessive synthesist myself in an era before electronic pop really even existed. It’s important to note that while artists like Wendy Carlos were creating their brilliantly elaborate, but still bleepy and sqawky works like Switched-On Bach, Kraftwerk was creating electronic pop music so listenable and evolved in its sensibilities that artists like Eno have described it as “nostalgia from the future”. And Kraftwerk’s brilliantly simple marketing themes – from the slyly uber-teutonic Autobahn album cover with its iconic Mercedes Benz and Volkswagen cruising through the rolling hills of a Germanic dreamland, to their later images that implied – but directly never mentioned – the coldly intellectual clean cut scientists of World War II Germany – have helped maintain a peculiar mystique around the band for decades. I mean, have you ever actually seen or heard zee operator wiss zee pocket calc-u-lator speak in an interview? Probably not, unless you stopped by KlingKlang Studio in Dusseldorf and caught them in. The studio doesn’t even have a phone, according to this Guardian piece that explores the band’s press stealth, but manages to illicit “I got a new head, and I’m fine“. But enough of my sycophantic drivel, I really just wanted to suggest that if you have three hours and an obsessive interest in the intricate details of Kraftwerk’s evolution, you should check out Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution. It explores the entire German electronic music scene from the 60′s through to the 80′s, with Kraftwerk as a main course but with fairly hearty (and probably necessary) side-dishes of Popol Vuh, Tangerine Dream, Amon Duul and Neu! If you’re REALLY into Kraftwerk, you may have already seen it; it’s been out since 2008. I personally only discovered it the other day. I recommend watching it as a mini-series though; three straight hours of in-depth commentary and analysis was a bit much even for a lifelong fan like like myself. It’s already a great deal as an on-demand DVD, but there’s also a $2.99 download. And if you simply don’t have the attention span, maybe you should just get their new iPhone app, released last week.