Karl Bartos (born 31 May 1952, Berchtesgaden, Germany) was, between 1975 and 1991, along with Wolfgang Flür, an electronic percussionist in the electronic-music group Kraftwerk. He was originally recruited to play on its US "Autobahn" tour. In addition to his percussion playing, Bartos was credited with songwriting on the Man-Machine, Computer World, and Electric Café albums and sang one lead vocal on the latter.
He left the group in 1991, reportedly frustrated at the slow progress in the group's activities because of the increasingly perfectionist attitude of founding members Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider.
In 1992 Bartos founded Elektric Music, performing in a style somewhat similar to Kraftwerk. This new project released Esperanto in 1993 and then Electric Music in 1998. In between the two albums, Bartos collaborated with Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr on Electronic's 1996 album Raise the Pressure, and co-wrote material with Andy McCluskey which appeared on both Esperanto and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's Universal album. In 1998, he also produced an album by defunct Swedish synthpop band the Mobile Homes, much in the style of his work with Electronic: guitar-pop with very slight synthetic references. It was received as a great disappointment to synthpop fans, but it sold more than any of their previous albums and was used in TV advertisements for an airline to moderate success.
In 2003 he released the synthpop album Communication, featuring such songs as "I'm the Message," "Camera," and "Ultraviolet."
Karl Bartos announced in early 2008 that he had opened the first edition of the audio-visual exhibition Crosstalk for public viewing at the white cube section on the official Karl Bartos website. The program holds 21 films, remixes, cover versions, and mash-ups from Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, United Kingdom, the USA, and Japan.
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