Wolfgang Flür of Kraftwerk fame has teased collaborations with Thomas Bangalter, Juan Atkins, and Peter Hook ahead of his upcoming album.
There is clearly life after Kraftwerk for Wolfgang Flür. Nearly four decades after he parted ways with the pioneering electronic music group, he’s gearing up to release an album titled Time — and a handful of the genre’s most celebrated figures are among his collaborators.
Flür revealed as much in an interview with Blick that ran over the weekend. “My album Time will be released in September,” reads an English translation of one of his answers. “Great people are involved: Peter Hook from New Order, Thomas Bangalter from Daft Punk, U96 from Hamburg, and Juan Atkins from Detroit. I will present dance versions of the songs in Zurich.”
Hook is among the founding members of New Order — a band who, like Kraftwerk, played electronic music before the explosion of house and techno attached the genre to a youth culture movement. Although he parted ways with the group in 2006, he was present during its most influential years.
Bangalter has also kept busy since Daft Punk called it quits nearly three years ago. Among other things, he has composed a ballet score for the 2023 film Mythologies and is slated to deliver the soundtrack for DAAAAAALÍ, the upcoming film about Salvador Dalí, on February 7.
Juan Atkins is one of the artists most closely associated with Detroit techno. His first success came as one half of the electro duo Cybotron, but his work with fellow local musicians like Eddie Fowlkes and Kevin Saunderson cemented his legacy as an originator of the Motor City’s distinct take on electronic music.
Flür played with Kraftwerk as a percussionist for 15 years after joining the group in 1973. Interestingly enough, he also released a solo album called Time Pie in 1996. Time will follow his subsequent LPs, Eloquence (2015) and Magazine 1 (2022).
No tracklist is available for Wolfgang Flür’s upcoming album, Time, as of this writing. It is slated for release in September.
