kraftwerk tour de

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Tour De France by Kraftwerk

Songfacts®:

• This song was written about the Tour De France, a famous French road race for professional cyclists. Kraftwerk members Florian Schneider and Ralf Hutter are obsessed with bicycles, calling themselves the Radsportegruppe Schneider (Schneider Cycling Club).
• The melody appears to be borrowed from part of the opening section of German composer Paul Hindemith's 1936 "Sonata For Flute And Piano."
• The track was originally recorded for a Kraftwerk album called Techno Pop , which was re-titled Electric Café and released in 1983. "Tour De France" was left off the tracklist but released as a single. The following year, after being included on the soundtrack to the film Breakin' , the song was re-released, this time reaching #23 in the UK.
• In Britain, this was used by Channel 4 as their theme music for their coverage of Tour De France.
• Ex-Kraftwerk member Karl Bartos claimed Florian Schneider and Ralf Hutter's obsession with cycling was one of the factors that prompted him to quit the band.
• The sleeve of the "Tour de France" single was adapted from a 1953 Hungarian postage stamp.
• More songs from Kraftwerk
• More songs that became hits when they were re-released
• More songs inspired by athletes, teams or sporting events
• More songs used in movies
• More songs inspired by bicycles
• More songs from 1983
• Lyrics to Tour De France
• Kraftwerk Artistfacts

Comments: 1

• Chris from Germany Kraftwerk were ahead of their time and had a lot of good songs before they released Tour De France in 1983. They intended to release Techno Pop in 1983 and they had still made videos and promotions. There were also ads in music magazines. However many problems and such things caused the band to not release the album. The songs were recycled for their 1986 album Electric Cafe. Tour De France is awesome and really catchy. In 1983 they had a lot of competition with synth pop bands but they were still good and innovative. The Francoise Kevorkian remix of the song is one of the best. The song was released in 1983 and had minor success but it was a household name among the breakdance scene and so the song was rereleased in the 1980s.

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Tour de France

About Tour de France

"Tour de France" is a song by Kraftwerk. It was first issued in June 1983, peaking at number 22 in the United Kingdom singles chart. It is notable for the use of sampled voices and mechanical sounds associated with cycling that were used to supplement a simple electro-percussion pattern – an approach Kraftwerk had used on earlier tracks such as "Metal on Metal" (from Trans-Europe Express) and "Numbers" (from Computer World). The music is credited to Ralf Hütter, Florian Schneider and Karl Bartos; the lyrics are credited to Hütter and Maxime Schmitt, a French label associate of the band. The melody appears to quote a fragment of the opening section of Paul Hindemith's “Sonata for Flute and Piano” (“Heiter Bewegt”). For Kraftwerk, "Tour de France" was a departure from the technological tone of the two previous albums, The Man-Machine and Computer World. Instead, the song is a joie de vivre celebration of cycling, marking the group's increasing interest in the sport. Of the current line-up, Hütter and Fritz Hilpert have been known to take part in cycling events.   more »

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Kraftwerk (German pronunciation: [ˈkʀaftvɛɐk], meaning power station) from Düsseldorf, Germany, is an influential electronic music project that was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008. The signature Kraftwerk sound combines driving, repetitive rhythms with catchy melodies, mainly following a Western Classical style of harmony, with a minimalistic and strictly electronic instrumentation. The group's simplified lyrics are at times sung through a vocoder or generated by computer-speech software. Kraftwerk were one of the first groups to popularize electronic music and are considered pioneers in the field. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Kraftwerk's distinctive sound was revolutionary, and… more »

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Written by: FRITZ HILPERT, RALF HUETTER, MAXIME SCHMITT, FLORIAN SCHNEIDER-ESLEBEN

Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.

Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind

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• #1 The Man-Machine
• #1 The Man Machine
• #3 Tour de France Etape 1
• #4 Chrono (Riga)
• #5 Tour de France Etape 2
• #6 Vitamin (Moscow)
• #7 Tour de France
• #7 Tour de France (Paris)
• #8 Autobahn
• #8 Autobahn (Berlin)
• #9 Das Model
• #9 Model (London)
• #9 The Model
• #10 Neon Lights (London)
• #10 Neon Lights
• #11 Radioactivity (Warsaw)
• #12 Trans Europe Express (Budapest)
• #14 Numbers (San Francisco)
• #15 Computer World (Moscow)
• #16 Home Computer (Warsaw)
• #17 Pocket Calculator (Moscow)
• #18 Dentaku (Tokyo)
• #20 Elektro Kardiogramm (Tallinn)
• #21 Aerodynamik (Riga)
• #22 Music Non Stop (Moscow)
• #11 Radioactivity
• #12 Trans Europe Express
• #13 Metal on Metal
• #14 Numbers
• #15 Computer World
• #16 Home Computer
• #16 Computerwelt
• #17 Pocket Calculator
• #18 Dentaku
• #18 Taschenrechner
• #19 The Robots
• #20 Elektro Kardiogramm
• #21 Aero Dynamik
• #22 Music Non Stop
• #23 Musique Non Stop

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Tour de France Soundtracks

Electronic / Rock

Astralwerks

August 11, 2003

After 1981's Computer World , Kraftwerk were anxious to begin work on their next LP. Perhaps spurred on by the warm reception (after a short of period of inactivity), Ralf Hutter, Florian Schneider, Karl Bartos and Wolfgang Flur set out working on a forthcoming album, to be titled Technopop . Technopop was to feature songs including its title track and "Sex Object", which would later surface on 1986's Electric Café . Its first single was to have been "Tour de France", and that track was in fact released in 1983. However, Technopop was not to be: due to a series of circumstances-- not least of which, Hutter's bicycle accident, which kept him out of serious action for the better part of a year-- the band decided to stretch their deadline, incorporate a few more state-of-1986 recording techniques (including, gasp, sampling) and concentrate their full length ideas on Electric Café . "Tour de France"-- not a particularly classic entry in their singles catalog in the first place-- was left to drift into nothingness, and all was tidily swept under the mouse pad.

But you know Kraftwerk have never been ones to let perfectly customizable data lay unaltered. From the time Hutter and Schneider hooked up in Düsseldorf in the late 60s to their heyday of the late 70s/early 80s and on through their complete catalog reworking (1991's The Mix ), Kraftwerk have been a model of efficiently planned obsolescence. Taking a page from fellow tech-freak George Lucas (and Bill Gates for that matter), they don't even want to make their earliest releases available, making sure all client-side installations have been successfully updated to the most recent Kraftwerk sound.

To their credit, Kraftwerk have a knack for emphasizing their best ideas, as almost all of their records from Autobahn until Computer World are dazzling specimens of the single-minded desire to progress, and the synergy of four pretty distinct individuals. What's more, they're pop. Unlike virtually any other band from the first wave of Krautrock, Kraftwerk produced music that worked as both experimental museum piece and a dancefloor (or living room) beacon. They are like the Beatles of electronic music: inspirations to NPR coffee talkers, crusty academic types and regular folks who just want to get robotic every now and again.

So what a disappointment it must seem to witness the band rework "Tour de France" and slap a few new tracks down for their "new" LP, a soundtrack to the annual cycling event. I mean, in this fertile era for electronic music, when so many sounds seem ripe for the next revolution, you would think the godfathers of the genre would be serving up more than leftovers for our digital consumption. In fact, when the three-part "Tour de France" single was released earlier this year, many fans were disappointed: it would take more than modern tweaking to turn its thin melody and almost non-existent lyrical concerns (even for Kraftwerk) into something interesting. Bet step back-- perhaps surprisingly, Kraftwerk still have a few tricks up their sleeves. Their latest LP may not pack the same fortune-telling punch of their classic records, but it is nevertheless a distinctly engaging, sophisticated experience. And I think "sophisticated" is ultimately the perfect word for Kraftwerk, able to forge beautiful, instinctively appealing sounds out of mercilessly mechanical processes.

After the short synth-driven "Prologue", the album begins with the title track, divided into three parts. "Tour de France Etape 1" starts as a fairly quick, light splash of microhouse featuring patented vocoder vocalizations stating the title, and various stages of the actual race. There really isn't a melody per se, except for a recurring synth line sounding not unlike one of the perky jingles used as the soundtrack for your computer booting up. "Etape 2" modifies the texture slightly, with flanged effects panning across the mix and subtle harmony vocals, but otherwise proceeds unchanged; "Etape 3" drops a glittery, arpeggiated synth figure to start, but soon returns to the main theme of the first section. All three pieces are clearly part of one large "Tour de France" mega-mix, and probably work best when you opt to appreciate the small details instead of looking for epiphanies in the beats or hooks.

Things get a lot more active on the second half of the record, as tunes like "Vitamin" and "Aero Dynamik"/"Titanium" sparkle from the ever-pristine Kraftwerk polish. The latter tunes are practically perfect realizations of the power of a minimal, uncluttered mix of activity when you know how to highlight a beat (hint: they do). The calculated resonance of each percussive ping probably deserves its own article in a journal for electronic music, but we're free to just let them go by and by and by. "Vitamin" begins with an extroverted, constantly modulated synth line and fluttery, reverb-drenched chord cluster over which a patented Kraftwerk bot-beat runs its course. Similar to the title suite, the song works its magic via a repetitive power of persuasion, and also similarly features an optimistic, recurring melody.

Perhaps the only really disappointing aspect of Tour de France -- beyond the still-not-that-great version of the title song (which ends the album)-- is that it emits a muted, comfortable aura rather than the immediately striking tone of their classic releases. In the end, that probably won't make much difference in your enjoyment of this music, but if first impressions are very important, it could be a potential turn-off for those expecting a return to Kraftwerk's trailblazing status. Sure, they might not ever be heads of the class again, but when you own the school, smart students will probably listen to what you have to say anyway.

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‘Tour De France Soundtracks’: Kraftwerk’s Gear-Changing Final Album

Recorded to mark the 100th year of the iconic cycling tournament, Kraftwerk’s ‘Tour De France Soundtracks’ remains an enduring swansong.

Finally inspired to record an album of all-new material for the first time in 17 years, Kraftwerk’s 11th studio outing, Tour De France Soundtracks , found the group in an entirely different musical landscape from when they released their previous album, 1986’s Electric Café . By this point, electronic dance music had swept the world to become a cultural phenomenon, largely thanks to the pioneering synthesiser work Kraftwerk had originally set in motion in the 70s.

Listen to ‘Tour De France Soundtracks’ here .

Keen to keep the wheels moving despite the departures of long-term members Karl Bartos and Wolfgang Flür, group founders Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider invited Fritz Hilpert and Henning Schmitz into the fold and set to work on a new album that coincided with the 100th anniversary of the Tour De France. Spinning out ideas from his fondness for cycling, Hütter was keen to explore the feats of human endurance achieved by the likes of tournament winners Fausto Coppi and Louison Bobet, and headed to Kraftwerk’s Kling Klang studio to engineer the group’s much-anticipated comeback.

“Forward – that’s what you do with your bicycle. You move forward”

Remarkably, the genesis of Tour De France Soundtracks stretched back 20 years earlier, when Kraftwerk released an EP celebrating Hütter’s love of cycling. “In 1983 we were working on a concept for a feature film on Tour De France,” Hütter said, “so I wrote some lyrics and conceptual ideas for our album Tour De France .” No strangers to exploring modes of transportation on records such as the motorway-centric Autobahn and the train-inspired Trans-Europe Express , the original 1983 Tour De France song hinted at a new Lycra-clad reinvention for the one-time robots, and reached No.22 in the UK in August that year. Following a bike accident which landed Hütter in hospital, however, the album idea was put on hold and Kraftwerk moved on to record Electric Café instead.

Then, in 2003, in a bid to mark the 100th anniversary of the Tour De France tournament, Kraftwerk decided to revisit the cycling concept. Updated for the 21st century, the group’s cycling song was just as innovative as anything they had done before, with Hütter’s breathless vocals being recorded after running up and down the stairs in Kling Klang. Propelled by a winding electro beat and the sound of spinning spokes, this new version of Tour De France peaked at No.20 in the UK in July 2003 and saw Hütter recite French lyrics evoking the arduous journey of cyclists traversing the Alps.

After the group successfully fleshed out the concept into a full album, Tour De France Soundtracks finally saw light of day on 4 August 2003 and proved Kraftwerk’s momentum had only accelerated in line with the new era of electronic dance music they had helped usher in. With pristine ambient soundscapes and the throb of trance-enamoured synths, the wheels are set in motion on Prologue before leading into the glorious Tour De France (Étape 1-3), a 15-minute trio of tracks acting as an odyssey of perpetual motion. “We are very interested in the dynamics and the energy and the movement,” Hütter said. “The German word is ‘vorwärts’, forward – that’s what you do with your bicycle. You move forward.”

“It’s percussive and dynamic. We never feel there’s nowhere left for us to go”

By aiming “to glorify the muscles of the human being” with a freewheeling sonic tone poem aided by Kraftwerk’s machine-like rhythms, Tour De France Soundtracks captured the trials of any hardened cyclist with their eyes on the prize. “The noise of the bicycle chain and pedal and gear mechanism,” Hütter said, “the breathing of the cyclist, we have incorporated all this in the Kraftwerk sound.” As an ode to sports endurance, the group even found room to explore health supplements, on the song Vitamin, as well as the metal that comprises the bicycle itself, on Titanium.

Seeing the human body as a machine, the album’s second single, Elektro Kardiogramm, continued to look at health and fitness by building a beat around Ralf Hütter’s pulse. “We took medical tests I did over a couple of years, heartbeat recordings, pulse frequencies, lung volume tests, and used those tests on the album,” Hütter said. “It’s percussive and dynamic. We never feel there’s nowhere left for us to go.” Released in October 2003, the song brilliantly reflects a cyclist’s commitment to reaching the peak physical performance necessary to complete the Tour De France’s various stages.

Given Kraftwerk’s role as sonic innovators who paved the way for dance music – particularly the rise of genres such as house and trance – it’s perhaps unsurprising that Tour De France Soundtracks shares much in common with contemporary EDM. Unlike most nightclub DJs, however, Kraftwerk saw an artistic opportunity to use the mesmeric quality of those styles of music to mirror the flow state of cyclists on the move. “The Tour is like life: a form of trance,” Hütter said. “Trance always belongs to repetition, and everybody is looking for trance in life… in sex, in the emotional, in pleasure, in anything… so the machines produce an absolutely perfect trance.”

“Cycling is the man machine. It’s me, the man machine on the bicycle”

Tour De France Soundtracks’ third single, Aerodynamik, was released in March 2004. A shimmering five-minute minimal techno song about battling headwinds, it peaked at No.33 in the UK, its synth blips, pulsing rhythms and bubbling vocoder vocal offering a reminder of the divine synchronicity between man and machine, cyclist and bicycle. “Cycling is the man-machine,” Ralf Hütter once said, explaining elsewhere: “It’s me, the man machine on the bicycle.” With this in mind, it’s clear that Tour De France Soundtracks fits perfectly among Kraftwerk’s work, chiming with their commitment to opening our eyes to how humanity can be enhanced by technology.

Another of Tour De France Soundtracks ’ notable moments, La Forme – later to be remixed by Hot Chip in 2007 – can also be seen through this prism. One of the best Kraftwerk songs, it praises physical fitness and celebrates the fusion of a cyclist’s muscle movement with the mechanics of cycling itself. “When we worked on this album,” Hütter explained, “we tried to incorporate the idea of very smooth, rolling, gliding.” As a whole, Tour De France Soundtracks is best seen as a breezy soundscape that perfectly captures the process of cycling through challenging terrains better than any TV sports commentator can express. “Watch a ride through the mountains, switch off the sound and play our CD: you will be amazed,” Hütter said.

To this day, Tour De France Soundtracks is the last album of new studio material released by Kraftwerk. Not only did it peak at No.1 in Germany – the group’s highest chart placement in their homeland – but it also made an impression in the UK, reaching No.21 and proving that Kraftwerk’s decades-long standing as the godfathers of electro-pop was beyond doubt. Finding the group as forward-thinking as ever, Tour De France Soundtracks released the breaks and gifted us with yet another tour de force.

“We are still here,” Ralf Hütter said a year later, when asked what he was most proud of. “And we are still moving forward.”

Find out more about Kraftwerk’s pioneering electro legacy .

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100 Jahre Kraftwerk Fenne – Von Kohle zu Wasserstoff

Dass eine verlässliche Strom- und Wärmeversorgung nicht in Stein gemeißelt ist, wurde durch Russlands Angriffskrieg in der Ukraine deutlich. Ein Rückgrat der saarländischen Energieversorgung ist das Kraftwerk Fenne. Dessen 100-jähriges Jubiläum wurde am Samstag gefeiert.

Die Maschinenhalle ist das historische Herzstück des Kraftwerks Völklingen-Fenne. Vor 100 Jahren, sechs Jahre nach Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges, wurde genau hier mit Kohle aus dem benachbarten Bergwerk Luisenthal Strom produziert – 1924 allerdings noch nicht für Privathaushalte, sondern zur Elektrifizierung von Industrie und Bergbau.

Energieproduktion im Wandel

Kohle wurde in Fenne ab Ende der 1960er Jahre in bis zu drei Blöcken verfeuert. Ab 1982 war es ein Modellkraftwerk, das neben Strom auch Fernwärme herstellte.

Heute werden am Standort mit Erd- und Grubengas Strom und Fernwärme produziert. In vier Jahren soll auf der benachbarten grünen Wiese der HydroHub entstehen – eine Wassserstofffabrik.

Grüne Energie

„Der HydroHub soll hier am Kraftwerksstandort Fenne im Rahmen der Sektorenkopplung, also der Verknüpfung mehrerer Sektoren von der Wärme zur Stromerzeugung, zur Nutzung des Wasserstoffs als Gas, eben der Keim an diesem Standort sein, um die Transformation einzuleiten“, erklärt Patrick Staudt, bei Iqony Gesamtprojektleiter für den HydroHub Fenne.

Dieser solle dann aus erneuerbarem Strom und aus Wasser Wasserstoff erzeugen. „Auch Sauerstoff und Wärme als Nebenprodukte sollen genutzt werden.“

Ziel sind jährlich 5000 bis 6000 Tonnen grüner Wasserstoff. Ein möglicher Abnehmer könnte die Stahlindustrie sein. Frühestens in vier Jahren, Ende 2028, könnte die Produktion beginnen.

150 Millionen Euro soll die Fabrik kosten, gefördert mit 102 Milllionen Euro von Bund und Land. Die endgültige Entscheidung über das Projekt soll um den Jahreswechsel herum fallen. Zunächst müssten alle Verträge mit den Abnehmern fixiert werden, so Staudt.

Lebendige Geschichte

In der Maschinenhalle trifft Historie auf moderne Technik: Die alte Original-Krananlage wird nach wie vor benutzt. „Ein weiterer Meilenstein war für mich ganz einfach, dass wir hier ins alte Maschinenhaus dann diese Grubengasanlage gebaut haben“, erinnert sich Andreas Detemple. „Das war damals Europas größte Grubengasanlage, die gebaut wurde. Die haben wir hier in den Standort praktisch reingebaut, in die alte, denkmalgeschützte Halle von 1920.“

Detemple ist Standortbetriebsrat in Fenne – und mit 45 Dienstjahren selbst ein Urgestein des Kraftwerks. In Spitzenzeiten arbeiteten dort rund 630 Mitarbeiter. Aktuell sind es nur noch 120.

Revival als Netzreserve – Zukunft Wasserstoff

Wegen des Krieges in der Ukraine und der damit verbundenen Energieknappheit wurde das Kohlekraftwerk bis Oktober 2023 nochmals hochgefahren . Momentan dient es als Netzreserve auf der energetischen Ersatzbank Deutschlands, ist aber systemrelevant. Das heißt, für Notfälle muss es bereitstehen – keine einfache Situation für den Betreiber und die Mitarbeitenden.

Dennoch schaut Kraftwerksleiter Christian Neu optimistisch in die Zukunft. „Die gesamte Transformation im Saarland, der Energiewirtschaft, des Stahls, basiert zukünftig auf Wasserstoff. Das heißt, wir werden infrastrukturell gut dort eingebunden sein. Wir machen jetzt den Übergang von 100 Jahre in die zweite Zenturie, verabschieden uns von der Steinkohle und werden dann mit dem Wasserstoff, hoffe ich, in eine prosperierende Zukunft fahren.“

Festakt zum 100. Jahrestag

Am Freitagabend fand zum 100. Geburtstag des Kraftwerks Fenne ein Festakt in der Kulturhalle Völklingen-Wehrden statt. Dabei wurde auch über die Zukunft des Standortes diskutiert.

Am Samstag gab es dann einen "Tag der offenen Tür" bei dem Besucher das Kraftwerk hautnah erleben konnten.

Über dieses Thema hat auch der aktuelle bericht vom 20.09.2024 berichtet.

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