The Kraftwerk laboratory

The Kling-Klang-Studio on Mintropstraße

Kraftwerk's former Kling-Klang-Studio is now a special kind of pilgrimage site. It is hidden away in a backyard in the middle of Düsseldorf's Bahnhofsviertel district and still exudes that hermetic aura that suits the band. Gerrit Terstiege has set off on a journey into the past.

A few music studios today are truly mythical places. Visiting them inevitably fills you with a mixture of awe and melancholy. You embark on a search for lost time. The Sun Studio in Memphis, for example, is only still intact today because a hairdresser used it as a salon for years - and has changed little. The hairdresser even left the perforated soundproof panels on the walls, which can be seen in famous session photos of Elvis or Johnny Cash. Just like the Muscle Shoals Studio in Alabama, it has long since been added to the National Register of Historic Places - so both are now veritable monuments. So they will be spared the fate of New York's Columbia 30th Street Studio, which was simply demolished sometime in the early 1980s. The former church with its 30-metre-high ceiling offered a unique resonance chamber that can still be heard on legendary albums by Glenn Gould, Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Bob Dylan and Pink Floyd.

A visit to Düsseldorf's station district

Abbey Road, the Hansa Studios in Berlin, Conny Plank's converted pigsty in Wolperath - each of these places has an aura for music fans that fills them with almost romantic feelings, despite their actually completely technical, mundane function. Speaking of romance - perhaps it is fitting that Düsseldorf's Mintropstraße 16, the address of Kraftwerk's former Kling-Klang studio, is named after Theodor Mintrop, a 19th century Romantic painter. If you approach this place by car, however, romantic emotions are quickly lost. The navigation system guides you through the narrow streets of Düsseldorf's station district, it's loud and busy here, streetcars are overtaken by cabs and SUVs, you have to concentrate on the traffic and yet all these names come to mind when you drive past here - names from Düsseldorf's cultural heyday: Joseph Beuys, Blinky Palermo, Imi Knoebel, Westernhagen in the Hühner Hugo, the rocked-out Ratinger Hof right behind the art academy, where everyone who wanted to crash and rise met.

"Mecca of electronic music"

In 2014, Rüdiger Esch, the former bassist of Die Krupps, published the book ELECTRI_CITY about Düsseldorf as a "Mecca of electronic music", in which numerous protagonists of those years, some of whom have since passed away, such as Gabi Delgado and Klaus Dinger, have their say. A little tip: If you're not so familiar with the Düsseldorf art and music scene of the seventies and eighties, it's best to start reading the book at the back: with the short biographies of the interviewees. Wolfgang Flür, Kraftwerk drummer from 1973 to 1986, contributed a poetic foreword for ELICTRI_CITY. He writes: "The Rhine, the magical river whose banks around Düsseldorf are heavily populated and industrialized, serves as both an attraction and a driving force. An enormous creative force seems to emanate from it; and as its riverbed widens and it flows into the North Sea, so do the currents that nourish the aforementioned myth: Industrial, synthpop, EBM, techno, house, electronica, ambient, drum'n'bass, trip-hop, jungle, dubstep. Always music that remains danceable and throws conventional song structures overboard. Based on our own music, which put technology and the computer at the center, which could turn the musician into an artist and the technocrat into a pop star."

Finally. The voice of the navigation system brings me back to the present: "You have reached your destination, the destination is on the left." A few meters separate me from the inconspicuous building, the lower section of which was clad in pale yellow tiles around the time Ludwig Erhard was Chancellor. The entrance to this front building looks like a huge dark mouth. As I park my car in the narrow backyard, it suddenly becomes strangely quiet. I sit in the car for a moment to collect myself. Again, images flash through my mind: for example, the back of the record sleeve of "Ralf and Florian", which shows the two musicians in the Kling-Klang studio, surrounded by machines from the prehistoric age of electronic music. Cables wind like snakes on the floor, the brick wall behind Florian Schneider shimmers green, the cardboard squares behind Ralf Hütter are reddish, a bag lamp casts its yellow light onto his keyboard, two neon lights shimmer their first names in the room. Other photos show the studio as a command center - and the musicians as eccentric lab technicians turning knobs, static like mannequins. Over almost four decades, the Kling-Klang-Studio has taken on many different forms, which were characterized by the extent of the respective technical equipment. Over time, these changed from monsters to slim laptops. The band is said to have hoarded the old equipment in the basement - in order to keep pace with the development of technology above ground.

Devices from Kling-Klang on ebay

Rüdiger Esch had the key to the Kling Klang studio for a while after Ralf Hütter stopped showing up and Florian Schneider had also folded up his tents. Esch knows the rooms inside out - even before they were renovated by the new tenants: "Florian Schneider rented this rather small room in 1970 - and he stayed there for a few more years after he left the band, until 2014, I think. Schneider even made music there - but I don't know if it was recorded. At some point, he also sold a whole range of equipment from the Kling Klang studio on eBay. He had written to Ralf to pick them up, but I don't think he ever got a reply. The actual Kling-Klang studio was the room immediately to the left as you enter the door. The glass blocks you can see from the outside are still the only windows. Later, more rooms were rented on the second floor. I bumped into Florian a few times on the street because I had an office nearby. We once had a long chat in an ice cream parlor. That was funny, he was from the Rhineland. After he left the Kling Klang studio, there were still a few clear references to the band there. For example, the sockets were numbered."

In 2009, Ralf Hütter had a new Kling-Klang studio built in Meerbusch. A reporter from the Rheinische Post once ventured there, interviewed people and tried to find the studio. Unsuccessfully. In a way, the new version in Meerbusch is even more mysterious than the old one - precisely because no one apart from the band's current circle has ever seen it. Incidentally, the old Kling-Klang differs fundamentally from the legendary recording studios mentioned above - the converted churches and pigsties - by the simple fact that its premises were open exclusively to the Kraftwerk guys. No time or cost pressures ever influenced any of their musical decisions, everything remained under their control and whatever happened behind those walls: crazy experiments, arguments, barren hangouts and sudden artistic breakthroughs - nothing ever leaked to the outside world. Perhaps the studio was a kind of shelter for Hütter and Schneider for many years, where they could be undisturbed. Where time stood still. You have to consider how small this oeuvre actually is, despite its worldwide impact and gigantic musical significance. Eleven studio albums in fifty years really isn't much. But it's not about quantity. And perhaps at some point the Kling-Kling-Studio has become a dream space that the fans should fill with their projections. With Kraftwerk, not everything is as it seems anyway. For this band, acting and creating a strong image is an artistic act on a par with musical achievements. Some historical photos also seem to show other rooms overloaded with technology. Perhaps a fictitious Kling Klang studio?

It should have been a listed building long ago. Today, advertising film makers, sound engineers and sound designers work in the legendary rooms. Moritz Staub and his company Staub Audio now work in the former Studio A, while composer Martin Schütze works in the old Studio B. A memorial plaque has not yet been installed. In a way, the old "Elektro Müller" sign above the entrance acts as one. This is because it ensured that the band remained incognito for many years and was able to work undisturbed. Someone has placed a traffic cone on the ramp in front of the historic entrance door. A clear sign - casual and pathetic at the same time. Almost: romantic.

Photos:

Cover picture: Markus Luigs

Photo exterior view street: Thomas Stelzmann

More pictures: Düsseldorf Tourism

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