Reimscheid, West Germany 1968. Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, two aspiring musicians in their early twenties. The Academy of Arts in Reimscheid proved as a stepping stone for their forthcoming adventure, which later proved to be a whole career. They were both students at the academy: Florian, a classical trained flutist and Ralf, a profound keyboard player. Both interested in modern technology, they sought to seek new ways of making music. In 1970, after moving to Düsseldorf to attend the Robert Schumann Academy, their experimentation culminated in an album: Tone Float (1971). The collaberative effort behind the record was the short-lived predecessor to Kraftwerk: Organisation. Building numbers around longphased jams and drones, their music was anything but heard before:
Contemporary music was progressing at the time, but much of the development happened in other parts of Europe, namely the U.K. The Beatles were at the height of their career, and other branches of the beat music was becoming more and more elaborate. Artists like Pink Floyd and David Bowie impressed with both sound and vision; fastening the British image of contemporary rock music.
In contrary, post-war Germany was dominated by western influenced pop and rock music, possibly due to the former musical restraints that were present under the Nazi reign. Popular music were largely foreign at the time, and not many German artists were known outside Germany. The uprising that Organisation was a part of interested many people, even outside their home country. The British music press coined the term "krautrock", describing the very German-esque characteristics of the genre. This was a much needed contrarevolution at the time, and it proved to spawn a whole new type of music: the electronic music.
