Electronic Dance Music, Techno Music, and Techno Dance Remixes

Updated for
 Halloween 2007

At the end of the sixties Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider-Esleben went to the Düsseldorf conservatory and followed classes by Stockhausen. Their interest in classical music was big, but they were much more impressed by the possibilities of electronic instruments and especially the studio. So while they were still studying they joined many starting German bands like Amon Düül and Organisation at first by playing flute and playing a kind of free-form music, based on a relative simple repeating rhythm and Eastern influences to break away from standard European chord progression. After two years the duo started their own band called Kraftwerk (which is German for 'Power station'). At the start of the seventies there were many bands in Germany which were part of a movement the outside world called 'Krautrock'. Krautrock was seen as an reaction of many young German musicians to the influence of American guitar rock imported by military personnel throughout the country it was also a way for many young musicians to react in their own way to the memory of the war and what role their parents or grandparents had played a part in that.

Only the second time Kraftwerk played live, they played on German television. Back then they consisted also of Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother who right after the show split and started their own band called NEU! While Neu went on to make highly repetitive rock, Kraftwerk created their own studio and experimented with sounds and simple melodies. On the first three records they still used normal instruments like a flute, guitar and a organ, but in 1974 they changed all that, they switched to all electronic instruments, they released "Autobahn". Autobahn was an almost endless track about one of Germany's prides the highways throughout the country, which were build by Hitler, but which were now also of essential use to the economic rebuilding of Germany and the rest of Europe. Although the complete version was at least thirty minutes long, it was to became a big hit throughout the world. Kraftwerk had found their style and every other two years they shocked the music world with another record made all electronically and in the studio which they rebuild every time they make a new record. The sounds, songs, theme's and the whole concept of Kraftwerk was to be of big influence in electronic music and popmusic in general.

Kraftwerk weren't the only one who saw the studio as an instrument in itself, on the other side of the world there were many masters of the studio. In the West-Indies and Jamaica music has always played a big part in the community. At the end of the sixties, while everyone in the world was listening to psychedelic rock music, the people of Jamaica were dancing to rocksteady, ska and a slow variant called reggae. The music-culture that was spawned in Jamaica was of great importance of many of the things you still see in dance music nowadays. Jamaicans were the first to take the concept of the remix to extremes, to keep people dancing in the dancehalls producers made special 'versions' of popular songs by fading in and out instruments and make multi-track copies of certain tracks called
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