Kraftwerk founder Florian Schneider-Esleben - who inspired musicians from Bowie to Kanye - dies

Kraftwerk in 1978: Left to right are Karl Bartos, Rolf Hutter, Florian Schneider and Wolfgan Flur. Photo / Getty Images

Florian Schneider-Esleben, who helped pioneer electronic music as the co-founder of Kraftwerk and influenced genres ranging from disco to synth pop, has died at age 73.

Citing fellow group founder Ralf Huetter, Sony announced that Schneider-Esleben had been suffering from cancer, German news agency dpa reported.

Schneider-Esleben and Huetter met while both were students at the Academy of Arts in Remscheid. They started working together in 1968, and two years later founded the Kling-Klang-Studio in Duesseldorf and launched Kraftwerk.

"From the beginning, we had a concept of electronic folk music. It's a kind of anticipatory music, looking ahead to the age of the computer," Huetter told the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle in 2014.

Farewell to a music pioneer 🤖 Thank you and RIP Florian Schneider @kraftwerk pic.twitter.com/lcg1o5tm9M

— Discogs (@discogs) May 6, 2020

They rarely spoke to reporters and their individual names were largely unknown to the general public, but few groups were as important in shaping the sounds of popular music over the past half century.

Just as their sensibility anticipated the computer age, their immersion in drum machines, synthesisers and other electronic instruments would be echoed in countless songs, whether in pop hits like Blondie's "Heart of Glass" and Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" or in the music of Depeche Mode, Bjork and David Bowie, who named one of his songs "V-2 Schneider."

"EVERY modern musician owes something to this man's vision," the Cure's Lol Tolhurst tweeted Wednesday.

Kraftwerk founders Ralph Hutter and Florian Schneider and in 1973. Photo / Getty Images

Kraftwerk albums included the breakthrough release "Autobahn," "Radio-Activity," "Trans-Europe Express," "The Man-Machine" and "Tour de France." The German group won a Grammy award for lifetime achievement in 2014, when it was praised for creating some of the most "influential work in our musical history."

🔘 SO SAD TO HEAR ABOUT FLORIAN | KRAFTWERK WERE OUR BIGGEST INFLUENCE | ELECTRONIC MUSICS BIGGEST INFLUENCE, EVEN ONE OF ROCKS BIGGEST INFLUENCE | WHAT A HERO 🔘 pic.twitter.com/Ro83iKnSDv

— Orbital (@orbitalband) May 6, 2020

Very sad to hear of the death of Florian Schneider. Kraftwerk are heroes and a huge inspiration to us and to all kinds of other music we love.

— Hot Chip (@Hot_Chip) May 6, 2020

When I was 10 years old, this was the greatest thing I have ever seen.
And the first time, I ever heard Kraftwerk. #RIPFlorianSchneider pic.twitter.com/YW83pb5c6l

— matt (@the_wigan_kebab) May 6, 2020

RIP Florian Schneider. This is what true innovation sounds like. https://t.co/KrX7fmZ8RA

— Gary Numan (@numanofficial) May 6, 2020

You've no doubt heard the sad news regarding the passing of Kraftwerk co-founder, Florian Schneider, aged 73. A spokesperson said he “passed away from a short cancer disease just a few days after his 73rd birthday”. Read all about Bowie and Kraftwerk here: https://t.co/cLADz972Vm pic.twitter.com/U1lGxfkyFJ

— David Bowie Official (@DavidBowieReal) May 6, 2020

Another of my great heroes gone https://t.co/3ElmWlRKZR

— Thomas Dolby (@ThomasDolby) May 6, 2020

Schneider-Esleben was the son of modernist architect Paul Schneider-Esleben and spent much of his childhood in Duesseldorf. Both he and Huetter were already working in avant-garde and experimental music when they met. In a 2005 interview with MOJO magazine, Huetter described him as a "sound perfectionist."

"So, if the sound isn't up to a certain standard, he doesn't want to do it," he said. "With electronic music there's no necessity ever to leave the studio. You could keep making records and sending them out. Why put so much energy into travel, spending time in airports, in waiting halls, in backstage areas, being like an animal, just for two hours of a concert?"

- AP