10 Most Influential Electronic Rock Artists

One of the defining characteristics of rock and roll is that it has to come from the soul. The emotions may come out sideways from time to time, but everything from anger to love to sadness is always going to have to be from a genuine place if you want to be taken seriously. At a time when rock and roll was hitting its peak though, Kraftwerk managed to get there by almost no emotion whatsoever.

Compared to the usual electronic acts coming out around the same time, there was a certain economy of sound to what this little collective from Germany was putting out. When listening to an album like Trans Europe Express or Computer World, these feel less like songs and almost like bits of architecture, being built fragment by fragment to create the most mystifying sound that you've ever heard.

And it's not like the rest of the scene didn't take notice either, especially the people who were already on the fringes of the music world. Taking the mindset of what Kraftwerk did, you had David Bowie doing his own version of it on his Berlin trilogy alongside Brian Eno, who would eventually incorporate it into his musical DNA when he turned to become a producer. God bless every one of these musical robots and the beautiful music that they've bestowed upon us.