Compute this. When Kraftwerk's Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider invented the future in Dusseldorf's early 1970s performance art scene that begat the Man Machine and Autobahn albums, live versions of their synth-pop extravaganzas necessitated the dismantling of their self-built studio, Kling Klang, for the occasion. By the time last year's Tour De France Soundtracks album showcased their first brand new material for 17 years, the laptop revolution had caught up with Kraftwerk enough to allow their portable kit to fit comfortably inside a Volkswagen hatchback. One imagines the band checking their e-mail, surfing the net or even knocking out a nursery rhyme ditty or two as they travelled.

When the scarlet-lit curtain parts on four shadowy, stock-still figures arranged with regimented perfection before their equipment, such an image remains. Setting the tone with the defining and possibly parodic Man Machine, Hutter, Schneider and two equally anonymous lieutenants are dwarfed by backdrops of Constructivist graphics that sets a monumental tone, and proves that Kraftwerk are as much about vision as sound.

A greatest hits sandwich of Autobahn, Tour De France and Trans Europe Express is visualised literally, the great outdoors travelling from industrial to organic and back again with the ultimate post-modern drivetime soundtrack. If the eco-friendly revisionism that adds a stern ''No'' to the title of Radioactivity is a quietly political act, The Model and Neon Lights reveal Kraftwerk as languid, dewy-eyed observers of the leisured European classes, forever in motion as blurred cityscapes unfold. Such psychogeographic ennui is dispatched, however, for the brilliant encore of The Robots, in which the band are replaced by a quartet of, well, robots.

It's a well-worn routine, but it remains a thrilling spectacle of the 21st century's most well-oiled musical machine.