Kraftwerk
Wed/28-Thurs/29, Warfield

IMAGINE WHAT THE world would be like if Kraftwerk never came to be. Would anyone have learned to break-dance or rave if it weren't for four plastic-faced men from Düsseldorf? In the mid '70s, while everyone else was trying to play guitar like Jimi Hendrix, founding members Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider invented a completely new form of pop music using only synthesizers and drum machines. The spare and repetitive dance music on albums like 1974's groundbreaking Autobahn and 1981's Computer World has often been maligned for lacking passion. As someone who came of age with Kraftwerk, I didn't so much fear the death of rock and roll as I wished the world could be as breathtaking and otherworldly as their perfectly formed minimalist melodies. Their pulsing, hypnotic grooves made me, like many, want to be cradled in the arms of robots as they marched into the future. With their vocoder-enhanced voices, staccato rhythms, and fascination with machines, Kraftwerk created a music that equated technology with progress. Now that computer love is a well-carved path to sex and relationships and every techno producer is beholden to them, critics are left to marvel at their prescience. Remaining members Hütter and Schneider are just as secretive as ever, but rumor has it that this tour has them working laptops under projections of retro-futuristic imagery as they digitally reconstruct the past. 8 p.m., 982 Market, S.F. $35. (415) 775-7722. (Deborah Giattina)