Published
Wed, Apr 2, 2008, 17:50
- Electronic music pioneer and inventor of the motorik beat Klaus Dinger has died at 61.
Not many drummers can claim to have invented a beat, but Dinger was one of them. Klaus Dinger was an early member of Kraftwerk in the late sixties back before they went wholly electronic, and went on to form proto-punk/electronic bands Neu! and La Dusseldorf in the seventies. In Neu! Dinger perhaps made his biggest contribution—inventing a new, very simple kind of beat with four frenetic kicks to each bar which came to be known as “motorik”, maybe the rhythmic equivalent of driving along an autobahn. Here’s Neu!’s quintessential motorik track ‘Hallo Gallo’ from 1972.
Here is Kraftwerk way before they decided to be robots, performing ‘Ruckzuck’ live on TV in 1970 with Klaus Dinger on drums. RIP Klaus. You were a great musician.