Kraftwerk Pay Tribute to Ryuichi Sakamoto as Computer World Turns 45 During Belfast Concert

Forty-five years this month, Kraftwerk released Computer World. The album described a world that barely existed yet. In Belfast last night, three songs from it opened the band’s performance at Waterfront Hall. Numbers, the title track, and Computer World 2 set the stage not as nostalgic artefacts but as functioning architecture. A brief glitch in the opening seconds of Numbers stretched a pause too long, then corrected, and the machinery held for the rest of the show.

Ralf Hütter, 79 and the last original member since Florian Schneider’s departure in 2008, kept mostly silent behind his console. His only extended words beyond a parting “Auf wiedersehen” addressed the late Ryuichi Sakamoto, who died three years ago. “Since 1981 and our very first concert in Tokyo we have been friends for ever,” he said, before guiding the band into a low-lit version of Sakamoto’s Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence. The piece fused into Radioactivity, soft synth pads cradling the immortal piano motif. It was a brief opening of the curtain, a clear acknowledgment of lineage and loss that rarely surfaces in Kraftwerk’s sequenced world.

The set pulled from a catalogue that blueprinted new wave, techno, electro, industrial and house. Autobahn’s breakdown saw Hütter warping arpeggios in real time. Neon Lights dissolved into an improvised coda, Hütter’s voice fractured but steady, adding gravity. The Tour de France medley unravelled the seated crowd, especially the iterative punch of Étape 3 locked to archival cycling footage. Trans-Europe Express tipped the room forward. For the encore, The Robots returned with skipping hi-hats that borrowed from Chicago more than Düsseldorf. What resonated most was not the spectacle but the clarity: music built before most of pop understood a synthesiser still sounded like a future worth observing.