Tag: Kraftwerk

  • KLF – What Time Is Love?

    The KLF‘s track What Time Is Love (the Pure Trance 1 version) was originally released in 1988 and is an original acid house track. Their breakthru however came with a reworked version What Time Is Love (Live at Trancentral) in 1990. They described this track as “stadium house”. This version does however contain a few samples.

    The “I wanna see you sweat” sample comes from the track To the Bone by Wanda Dee released just 1 year earlier in 1989. Interestingly another sample from that track was used on the KLF’s Last Train to Transcentral.

    The KLF also used a sample of the MC5’s Kick out the Jams from 1969. This had a double meaning since The KLF had previously worked under the name The Justified Ancients of MuMu, which in turns was abreviated to The JAMs. There’s also a sample by Kraftwerk’s Home Computer (1981) hidden in the middle.

    After the  second release in 1990, the KLF also released a third version of the song entitled America: What Time Is Love? in 1991. This completely reworked version features a sample of Ace of Spades (1980) by Motörhead.

    In the wake of the three versions of the song followed a few interesting songs. The Ragga Twins sampled it in Wipe the Needle already in 1991. Scooter (sadly) sampled it not once, but twice in a song, like he pretty much rips off any dance track that was ever famous. In 1993 The God Machine made a industrial-metal cover.The most bizarre cover of the song is most certainly The Williams Fairey Brass Band cover of it in 1997. The KLF would later feature this on their Fuck the Millennium-single. Max Tundra has done a cover in 2006. Last but not least, The Kaiser Chiefs did a cover in 2006 for BBC Radio 1 and quite an excellent one at that.

  • Kraftwerk – Computer Love

    Coldplay got a bit of flack in 2008 because their song Viva La Vida from the same year sounded a lot like If I Could Fly by Joe Satriani from 2004. Satriani sued, but dropped the charges when Coldplay and Satriani decided to settle out of court. Part of the deal was that they wouldn’t talk about it any more. Personally, I think they may have heard the song and got inspired by it subconsciously. Either that or it’s poor coincidence.

    Still, Coldplay has got a track record of borrowing tunes. And some times it makes sense. The opening of Life In Technicolor from 2008 sounds a lot like the Jon Hopkins track Light Through the Veins, also from 2008. But there’s a really good reason for that. Jon Hopkins was one of the producers of the Coldplay track and he let them borrow it.

    A different case however is the song Talk from 2005. It became a massive hit, but what a lot of people don’t know is that the main theme is borrowed directly from a motif from Kraftwerk’s 1981 track Computer Love. But in all honesty, Chris Martin did try his best to write German to ask Kraftwerk if they could use it (they said yes).