Men at werk

PIONEERING GERMAN electronic band Kraftwerk are bringing their multimedia extravaganza of clinical, repetitive rhythms and addictive pop melodies - synchronised with visual projections, robots and cutting-edge animation - to Hong Kong on May 4.

They are still revelling after rave reviews for eight sold-out 3-D concerts in London in February. Incredible demand for "Kraftwerk - The Catalogue 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8", their retrospective performances at London's Tate Modern art gallery, crashed the venue's website within hours of the 10,000 tickets going on sale.

And little wonder. One of the most influential bands in contemporary music, Kraftwerk are lauded as the godfathers of synth-pop, techno, electro, even of house and hip hop.

Britain's Observer newspaper wrote, "no other band since The Beatles has given so much to pop culture".

"We will perform two hours of compositions from the Catalogue in Hong Kong," Kraftwerk co-founder Ralf Hütter says speaking on the telephone from the band's secretive Kling Klang Studio outside Düsseldorf. "And for the first time in the city [Kraftwerk last appeared here in 2008], everything has been transformed into 3-D."

Kraftwerk had also hoped to take the tour to the Strawberry Music Festival in Shanghai at the end of this month, but the Ministry of Culture denied the German quartet visas because of their scheduled performance at a pro-Tibetan independence concert in 1999. That performance in Washington DC was ultimately cancelled because of a thunderstorm.