Florian Schneider death: Kraftwerk musician dies, aged 73

He co-founded the German electronic band in 1970

Schneider performing live in Helsinki with Kraftwerk in 2004 (Rex)

Florian Schneider, the co-founder of Kraftwerk, has died, aged 73.

Schneider formed the acclaimed German electronic band with Ralf Hütter in 1970 and, over four decades, released 10 studio albums, including the seminal five-track record Autobahn (1974).

Sony Berlin confirmed that Schneider died last week. The Guardian reports that he had been diagnosed with cancer.

Kraftwerk, who started out as part of the experimental krautrock movement in Germany, went on to become one of the first groups to popularise the electronic music genre.

Schneider remained a member of the band up until 2008.

David Bowie’s track “V-2 Schneider”, featured on his 1977 album Heroes, was named after the multi-instrumentalist, who could play – among other things – the flute, guitar, saxophone and synthesiser.

Speaking in 1991, Schneider said in a rare interview: “I had studied seriously up to a certain level, then I found it boring; I looked for other things, I found that the flute was too limiting ... Soon I bought a microphone, then loudspeakers, then an echo, then a synthesiser. Much later I threw the flute away; it was a sort of process.”

Much of what Schneider got up to following his departure from the group is unknown, but Hütter told The Guardian that “[he] worked for many, many years on other projects: speech synthesis, and things like that”.

In 2015, Schneider released an electronic composition titled “Stop Plastic Pollution” alongside Dan Lacksman as part of the “Parley for the Oceans” campaign.

Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp joined musicians around the world who paid tribute to Schneider, tweeting: “Such an important influence upon so much of the music we know, from Bowie, to electronica, much of the 80s and beyond into modern techno and rap, Florian Schneider was forging a new Metropolis of music for us all to live in.”

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark wrote on Twitter: “We are absolutely devastated to learn that one of our heroes Florian Schneider has passed away.”

And singer Lloyd Cole added: “The very best electropop, ever. RIP Florian.”