True, but one thing I find interesting is that NIN are doing the musician/coder thing without that being the main focus of their public image, whereas for Kraftwerk, and for some of the bitpop and nerdcore musicians, being musician-technologists is the core of the image.
I wouldn't say they were doing quite the same thing. To quote Charlie Clouser (NIN's keyboardist from 1995-2000) quoting Florian Schneider, who had just seen NIN play in Dusseldorf: "I know zat you vere usink zome zynthesizers, but dere vere too many guitars and I could not hear zee zynthesizers well enough to know if zey vere any güt."
Kraftwerk and Nine Inch Nails are two very different entities, most notably when you compare their live performances. Nine Inch Nails would not likely sound like what we know NIN to sound like had not Kraftwerk done their thing in the 70s, but you'd have trouble convincing me that anything on 1994's The Downward Spiral sounds like rehashed 70s music (Crystal Japan not withstanding).
"I learned that I don't want to relinquish that [programming] duty to others. I will day to day. But I need to be able to sit down and do what I want to do if I want to do it."
