Now this is a bizarre story. It appears that ex-Kraftwerk member Wolfgang Flür has been tricked into a collaboration on his new album by an unknown musician who purported to be Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter.
It conjures up mental images of a fake Bangalter arriving at Flür's studio in his robot costume. If only it were that simple.
According to a recent interview Flür has given to the Line Noise podcast, the tale begins in 2022 when the fake Bangalter got in touch with the veteran musician via social media to ask for a signed copy of Flür’s 2022 album, Magazine 1. “He said, ‘It’s so wonderful. Can I have a signed album? I collect albums but it must be signed personally from you. We love you guys.
"Without Kraftwerk we would not find our own robot style, being on stage with the helmets, you know. And I love you Wolfgang. And please, can you send me (an album)?’”
After he sends the album, Flür suggests a collaboration. “I asked him, ‘Could I invite you to be on a track because I'm just working on the theme, on space, I'm a space fan.’ And he said, ‘Oh I’m also a space fan. I already have an idea, Wolfgang. Maybe you can use it? Give me two days, I must find it. I must not play something new. I think it is exactly what you can maybe use.’
“So he sent me something and it was not really fitting in the musical key. But we changed the key and we corrected it a little bit, with the tempo. But we could very, very much use it in the middle part, together with the bass line of Peter Hook. And it fitted very well.”
Nothing at this point seemed untoward. It was only after the album was released last week that Daft Punk historian Luke Perez noticed that the co-credit on the tracks concerned, Über_All and Monday to the Moon, was a Thomas Vangarde - not Bangalter - that suspicions became raised. This seemed odd, though Bangalter’s father had apparently used the surname during his own musical past, which provided some sort of explanation.
Perez did some more digging before it was confirmed by an individual in close contact with Daft Punk’s management that the mysterious Vangarde is not Bangalter and thus Flür had been collaborating with an impostor.
“I’m assuming the fake Bangalter must have convinced Flür’s camp that he was now going by Thomas Vangarde in some sort of effort to cover their tracks,” Perez wrote in his post on his site.
“Bizarrely, it seems no one in the real Thomas Bangalter’s sphere found out about this or brought this up to him until after the tracks released, despite over two years of this being known about.
"It’s equally bizarre that at no point did Cherry Red Records (or any other involved party) question or debunk this bold claim that Thomas Bangalter was involved.”
However it all went down, the end result appears to be that somewhere, an amateur electronic musician is chuckling to himself that he’s somehow managed to wangle a co-credit with a member of Kraftwerk. Something to tell the grandchildren about.
