Nice werk if you can get it

With the help of superfans including Bill Bailey and local musicians and producers, we celebrate the return of the enduring, influential, confounding electronic group Kraftwerk.

Next month, a remarkable coincidence in live entertainment arrives on these shores. Bill Bailey, the great English comedian with musical leanings, returns for his umpteenth national tour. Also playing at the same time will be Kraftwerk, the influential electronic band that is arguably Germany's greatest contribution to pop music.

That the 58-year-old Bailey and the 53-year-old group will be in the same country on the other side of their world is a case of the planets aligning. Because among Bailey's finest musical parody moments was Das Hokey Kokey, his version of Hokey Cokey in a Kraftwerk style complete with three other guys in black suits.

His introduction to the piece, performed on his 2004 Part Troll tour, offered it as a tribute to one of his favourite bands. We wondered: Did he mean that? Yes, he did, he said, when the Listener asked if he would like to explain his long-term affection for the band, its aesthetic and sense of humour and how he's sent them up, complete with a recently recorded Kraftwerkian Wheels on the Bus. Here's Bailey's take on the Teutonic techno titans...

Early encounters

I first encountered them as a teenager growing up in the West Country, with their hit The Model. I loved the pared-down sound, the tech, the cool lyrics describing the hollow nature of artifice and glamour and celebrity which accurately pre-empted the 80s and continues to this day. This was the gateway to all of their earlier work, and subsequent albums. I had a little fourtrack recorder that I used to record my own demos on and was at the time playing in a band with synthesisers. So their look and sound really appealed. It was so different from everything else around.

Listening to them today