Kraftwerk

Anyone who ever wants to get into electronic or techno music can only ignore these guys for so long. Truth be told, no matter where you go in the field of electronic, you'll always come back to these guys. You can say "well I only like Paul Oakenfold" (if you were the sort of person who had no tolerance for good music), but then have to take into consideration that Paul Oakenfold was just a trance knockoff of Fatboy Slim, who was just a less talented version of the Chemical Brothers with a more commercial eye, who got most of their ideas from Kraftwerk. Along with Brian Eno, these guys blazed the forefront of techno music for everyone to follow, but even Brian Eno couldn't get as much done as these boys from Germany. Oh, sure, Eno was sure influential, and would probably get the title of 'musical genius' over these guys, but while his stuff focused more on ambient tones, sampling, and tape looks, Kraftwerk were creating actual dance/techno music, a good twenty years before it became as hated as it is today. Granted, this stuff is no exception - if you've no tolerance for 'bands' like Orbital and Underworld, you probably would pen this stuff off as being 'ridiculous'. But listen to what these guys were doing, even in 1974! Listen to it today and be amazed that this stuff is thirty years old! Okay, so today most of Kraftwerk's albums sound downright dated, almost to the point where I couldn't believe that Computer World had anything to do with these techno gurus that I liked at the moment.

Kraftwerk's soul was just as empty as their music - acutal photos of the guys just come off as being creepy, as the band members always did their best to look absolutely perfect and identical. Look at the cover of Trans-Europe Express if you don't believe that - it looks like a quartet of violinists, or composers, or something different, certainly not a bunch of guys who dicked around with their synthesizers until they could release an album. But don't think that the music didn't have a message - in fact, they were almost the theoretical precursors to Devo, if not for the fact that the two bands were exploring the same themes at pretty much the same times. Not that the lyrics actually meant anything more than the music did - they didn't use words a lot, and when they did, they were almost never sung (only one counter-example comes to mind, and even that is more like 'talking on-key').

But love 'em or hate 'em, anyone who owns a good collection of techno music is nowhere without at least a few Kraftwerk records, namely the essentials (1974-1981). In fact, many people believe that the records during this time are better than anything that's been released afterwards (and that the Ramones is the best punk band hands down). Before then, Kraftwerk was a different picture - a band of krautrockers more in the style of Can or Faust than what they'd later become. The two core members of the band, Hutter and Schnieder, started out as a band called Organisation, whose lineup was as follows:

Basil Hammoudi - Vocals

Butch Hauf - Bass

Ralf Hutter - Organ

Fred Monics - Drums

Florian Schnieder - Flute, Violin

Early Kraftwerk is sort of a rough patch - back then they tried too hard to be avant-garde and make noise without purpose. It wasn't really until 1974 that they actually learned how to write a structured song. Not that it matters much, as the Organisation debut as well as the first three Kraftwerk albums are out of print and impossible to find unless you can get a bootleg copy. Later Kraftwerk's where it was at, even though they still suffered from the same flaw - their songs were often too long, and even though this was no problem when the melodies are good, you still ended up with records that only had half a dozen musical ideas in forty minutes. Despite this, a few of their later albums are absolute classics, and I grudgingly have to admit that the fewer amount of melodies there are, the less chance they had of screwing it up. This resulted in records where it was so perfectly made that it was hard to point out where the flaws were (I'm thinking of Trans-Europe Express, The Man-Machine, and Computer World). And the strange thing was, the real flaw was that there were no flaws - everything was so cold, devoid of the human touch, that it was hard to say, "Yeah, this is one of the greatest albums..." But at the same time it was this perfection that brought so many people to the group in the first place. After Computer World the band remained largely inactive, with only a handful of releases after 1981. Still, by that point many bands had taken Kraftwerk's ideas and expanded on it, making Kraftwerk's future role in the music scene pretty small, which was good because they really lost their ability to write a good melody after 1983. Soon the 90's would come and create techno music, of which these guys obviously a big hand in making. For this, Kraftwerk, although probably not musical geniuses, will probably always be remembered for the electronic revolution they caused.

Organisation - Tone Float (1970)

Best Song: No songs here

Pardon me if the reviews of the first four albums on this page sound a little lazy, but that's because I don't know early Kraftwerk very well. Now you may wonder why, as a professional, paid reviewer I wouldn't just bother to learn the albums and then give a straight-up objective review. Actually there's a few reasons. For one, nobody really cares about early Kraftwerk. Most people who call themselves fans of the band probably haven't heard anything before Autobahn, and those that have sure aren't a very big fan of it - this really is nothing like the Kraftwerk that we all know and love. And of course, there's the fact that this stuff is incredibly hard to find unless you can find one of those bootlegs, but even so it's not worth it, as this isn't good music. What this is is a bunch of meandering percussion - bongos, drums, and lots of crash symbols over bass, flute, and lots of organ. As 'avant garde' as all get out, but not exactly very listenable, even though I find myself actually nodding my head to a few parts on here. The problem here isn't just that it's removed far from the later Kraftwerk releases, but that it's also pretty damn far removed away from the concept of tangible musical ideas, of which you really won't find any. I don't even mind that the first track, "Tone Float", is 21 minutes long and takes up an entire side of the album, since all of this stuff sounds pretty much the same anyways - chaotic instead of melodic, although it's never too noisy at one point, and *probably* mostly improvised. I mean, there's a near-hook on "Milk Rock", but nowhere else. You won't be walking down the street one day thinking, 'damn, I've got Tone Float stuck in my head again!'. And you certainly won't be thinking, 'man, I want to listen to this again', because there's about a million bands that do this sort of thing better - Can, anyone? Or for those of you who don't like the 70's, Stereolab? Or even Godspeed You Black Emperor, whatever it is they do?

I couldn't justify giving this album better than one star without saying something good about it, but it's hard to. The track "Rhythm Salad" is actually quite good for a while, but even at five minutes it's overlong. Even though this wasn't 'revolutionary' in any form (I've heard 'ahead of it's time' to describe the album, but music after 1970 never sounded like this), it is at least a little interesting in parts. Plus, most bootleg copies (which is pretty much all you can find - actual copies are few and far between) contain an extra track called "Vor Dem Blauen Bock" which starts out as pretty much the worst thing on the album but actually ends some guitar and turns into a pretty good jam after all.

Anyways, one last thing about this album - who the hell is Basil Hammoudi anyways? Vocals? You won't find any vocals on this record, unless you count some of the "aaah aaah aaah aaah aaah"s hidden in the background as a noteworthy performance. Not that they were going to help at all - this is just art-rock for art-rock's sake.

Kraftwerk (1971)

Best Song: Ruckzuck

Hutter and Schnieder left the band Organisation, which broke them up for good (but why!!!). They decided to call themselves Kraftwerk, which means "power station", enlisting a whole shitload of guys in various formations. Let's see...5 guys on percussion, including Klaus Dinger, as well as Michael Rother and some other dude doing guitars, while Hutter played keyboards and Schnieder played flute. This is pretty much the same sort of electronic experimentation that gave us such albums as Tone Float. However, this time, they actually had a guy to produce for them, Conrad Plank (an important figure in this whole movement). As a result, this is a little better than the Organisation debut, mostly because there's an actual good song on here, called "Ruckzuck". There's a hook, a nice beat, lots of cool Kraftwerk touches - this song alone makes the album valuable (although that flute part kinda sucks, skip forward to Trans-Europe Express if you don't agree), even though the rest of the stuff on here isn't incredibly bad too. Basically, the album is divided into two parts - the crappy avant-garde noisemaking bullshit that brings this album down, and the actual music-making where the drums play a steady rhythm over the bass or guitar or something similar. "Stratovarius" and "Von Himmel Hoch" are precisely that, although the latter takes waaaay too long to do anything to be worthwhile. The other track, "Megaherz", really doesn't get a beat or anything like that, but is pretty enough because it actually takes the 'ambient' side of the band and goes somewhere with it. Still wouldn't make my 'buy this album' list, but it's still got enough good parts to make you want to look into it. Not that it's easy to find, but there are still bootleg copies out there, and if you fire up your Kazaa, you might be lucky enough to find a copy of this (and the Spyware is also free!). And even if you do, it's still only "Ruckzuck" that makes it worth it.

Kraftwerk 2 (1972)

Best Song: Kling Klang, by default

Almost never made due to almost everyone leaving the band, with even Hutter leaving for a good six months. Rother and Dinger left to make the band Neu! which I enjoy quite a bit and will probably review after I'm done with these guys. But eventually Hutter and Schnieder came back to release another god-awful soul-destroying album full of even more ambient meanderings. Quite frankly, I have no idea who played on this album - my guess is it's just the two of them, according to this Kraftwerk scorecard that listed two other guys as having played with this incarnation of the band at some point. Kraftwerk 2 is just a third album of 'twist this knob, press that button', complete with another 17-minute track, opener "Kling Klang" which they eventually named their studio after. It's actually the best thing on the album, with it's pretty little flute part and almost-rockin' ending part, but once again this is an example of Kraftwerk stretching a couple minutes of musical ideas into an entire side of an album. Oh, and "Strom" ain't so bad, reminding me a bit of Rother and Dinger's new band, except all these key changes strike me as being more random than anything. This alone makes the album not deserve the one-star rating, because there are parts that I enjoy, but other than those songs, we get a whole bunch of boring as hell non-ambient pieces that just don't do anything. It's the same thing as Tone Float - it sounds like the guys just decided to go into the studio for a couple of hours with nothing really planned and just start playing their instruments until they found a loop of something that they liked. How the All Music Guide gave this four stars is beyond me - this really isn't worthy of more than one, but once again there's a few saving graces on the album, no matter how much I hate to admit it. Still, they're a pretty long way from giving us another "Ruckzuck", going for an approach that can't even be called 'minimalism' - this is simply a lack of ideas so bad that they resort to closing the album with a bunch of synthesized, patternless harmonica notes. Trash, but if you're that one person who still thinks Tone Float is one of the best ten albums of all time...hell, this is even worse than Tone Float, where the percussion was at least interesting.

Ralf and Florian (1973)

Best Song: Elektriches Roulette

Hutter and Schnieder (but they'd rather you called them Ralf and Florian) finally pick up the pace and start creating some actual music! Even though there aren't enough memorable hooks to make this get a good rating, I still find that this is an important link from Kraftwerk 2 to Autobahn because they finally dropped the atonal noodling and made a group of songs where the music, although not completely efficient, was at least tight enough to make you realize that there's more than a few musical ideas on the record (even though they still go on for too long). No, the songs still don't really develop much - like the other previous records, there's no big finishes, everything kind of just sits there. Then again, take fellow electronic pioneer Brian Eno with one of his albums like Music For Airports and you'll realize that he can do the same exact thing and still be well-received by critics. Well, Ralf and Florian works a lot in the same way, because the ambient passages are actually ambient, not just random. While there's no "Ruckzuck" on here, one track, "Elektriches Roulette" is pretty good - probably because it reminds me of a song from a much better album, "Summer's Cauldron" from XTC's Skylarking.

By 1986, the amount of artists who were making good music was dangerously low, but XTC decided that if balance was to be preserved, they would have to pull their greatest album yet! And pull they did, as Skylarking remains one of the top musical achievements from the 80s, battling giants such as Remain in Light, Zenyatta Mondatta and Lincoln for best album of the decade. Which reminds me, why is it that I can only think of a few really great 80's albums and about a billion 70's ones? Did people start to slowly lose their talent around when 1980 hit? Or...and this is where all this is going...WHAT IF Kraftwerk ruined it all by inventing this stupid synth-driven type of music? Or was it that Moroder guy? It might explain why so many great 70's and early 80's artists were starting to really suck around 1985, which the major exception of Skylarking, which had songs like "Grass" and "Another Satellite" that carry the late 80's on their backs until Kid A came along in 2001 and saved music as we know it (please give me money to write reviews for you Pitchfork Media). Okay, by my logic music didn't start to get worse in the early 90's, it's just that all the good bands weren't popular. You had to dig to find them. Maybe 20 years from now, people will realize that the band Tortoise was the best thing from the 90's after all next to this unheard of band called Modest Mouse (this is the 90's, remember).

I'll just begin talking a little more about Ralf and Florian, which is really nothing but a footnote in Kraftwerk history for preceding all their good albums. I will say, though, that "Kristallo" and "Ananas Symphonie" are pretty little pieces, although it's hard to remember any of the notes. And imagine my disappointment when "Tanzmusik" wasn't even musik you could tanz to! Regardless, the album is mostly a success - again, with no breakthrough tracks and still a bunch of Kraftwerk 2-isms in it's wake, it's not really worth a good rating, but if you've got all the good Kraftwerk albums and still want more, check this out (especially if you like the second side of Autobahn).

Kraftwerk gained a couple of members after this album - Hutter and Schnieder still worked voice and flute respectively, but now there's also Karl Bartos and Wolfgang Flur who are listed under "electronic percussion", pretty much the same as every other Kraftwerk member.

Autobahn (1974)

Best Song: Gotta say Autobahn

Here's the first big thing from Kraftwerk. Finally, they succeed in creating music that was based on actual patterns, had hummable melodies, and actually invoked some sort of feeling in the listener. "Autobahn" was the first big Kraftwerk single, of which an edited 3-minute version actually charted quite well. And if you loved the three-minute single, you'd probably also like the 23-minute version that makes up "Side A". The song itself is pretty much everything I described above - it's soothing, simulating the feeling you get driving around on the highway. There's a few sections to it, although it's pretty much all based on the main theme and one secondary theme, it's not hard to listen to the whole way because they never really let off the sense of melody. Now the main theme is the one everyone knows, and "farh'n farh'n farh'n auf der Autobahn" became a famous lyric. It's not, as everyone claims, a rip-off of that Beach Boys song that goes "fun, fun, fun", although it sure sounds like it. One of the Kraftwerk guys denied it, saying that although the Beach Boys were an influence, they didn't lift this refrain from them. Even though it sounds kinda silly, you know, not being sung and all, it at least helps drive the point home. But the thing that I love about it is just those happy vibes that comes radiating off the song like it was the sort of thing Kraftwerk had to cover on their next album. Maybe it's all those major chords...well, whatever, this is a good song, if a little under whelming for 23 minutes. What did you think this was, progressive rock? Did you think that they were going to pull off something as multi-parted and complex as "Supper's Ready" or "Tarkus" or "Lizard" (I didn't say 'tuneful') or "Close to the Edge"? Well, think again mister, because this is nowhere near as attention-demanding as any of those songs - making it perfect for driving while you're sitting back and relaxing behind the wheel.

Actually, now that I think about it, this is kind of like Tarkus, as in the album Tarkus. You remember how that album had a whole bunch of cool music on the first side with that 21 minute song and then just kind of lost it on the second side, throwing in a whole bunch of toss-offs and outtakes? Well, that's exactly what you get on the second side of Autobahn - basically the same proto-ambient stuff (garbage) as on Ralf and Florian. "Kometenmelodie" is the big thing of the second side, totaling 12 minutes. It's apparently dedicated to some guy who discovered a comet, which does show in the music - very spacey and astral. But that doesn't mean good, as the first part really just sits around and goes nowhere, even with it's half-melody. The second part where it gets good, structured like a spacey blues-rock song. This was strange, especially for Kraftwerk. The other two pieces are more ambient, although one falls into the trappings of Kraftwerk 2 (Mitternacht). The final track is the flute-led "Morganspaziergang" and it's actually quite pretty - there's a melody on this one too, making a total of three or four on the album.

So total it up and you still get an album that's better than the combined weight of the last four turkeys. The title track makes this essential, but don't expect much else.

Radio-Activity (1975)

Best Song: Airwaves, and I'll stick to that although it could be Antenna as well

Most people see this as being weaker than Autobahn, and admittedly it is a little weaker, but at the same time this album's a whole lot niftier. I mean, look at that! Twelve tracks! Too bad that many of them are short pieces that don't add to the album - little spoken word parts (I don't know what they're saying, it's probably in German and I still can't make out a single word), or a high-pitched frequency solo (like "Radio Stars"). In fact, there really aren't too many actual songs on here, and while a greater percentage of Autobahn is melodic, this album contains more ideas. I know I compared Autobahn to Tarkus before but think of it this way - how many different sections did "Tarkus" have? And how many different parts are there to "Autobahn"? Tarkus has like a 4 to 1 edge in that respect.

The slow moving "Radioactivity" is what many call the undeniable highlight - I think it's a little too slow and, dare I say it, boring to be called the next "Autobahn", but the main melody is sure good. Anyways, you want to know the cool thing about this album? Ralf actually sings on a few of the songs. Such as in the fast, almost surf-rock "Airwaves" which is an overlooked high point. There's also the track that connects these two, the slow-moving "Radioland" which acts as another proto-ambient piece. The whole first side is actually pretty good, featuring three actual Kraftwerk songs, two of which are actually very listenable! Too bad that after that we get a bunch of silly toss-offs ("Intermission", "News", "The Voice of Energy"), until another actual song shows up on Side 2, "Antenna". Hey, if "Autobahn" was getting radio play, then why not this? It's catchy and has a good hook, as well as more half-singing by everyone's favorite half-robot! Sure, all the radio wave noises get a little annoying (and this album is littered with them), but that's just what Kraftwerk does. Unfortunately, after that the outlook for the next 15 or so minutes look pretty bleak. There's this 2 minute spacey instrumental "Transistor", that saves it from being a total waste, but the rest is just the same avant-garde crap that Kraftwerk does doing before. And the closer, "Ohm Sweet Ohm", despite having an actual melody to it, doesn't really help things much (although it's not the worst thing on here). I'll always treasure it for the beginning part which the Chemical Brothers lifted for the beginning of "Leave Home", which is a much better song.

Oh well, 'classic' Kraftwerk begins next album, anyway. While it's still critically low on palatable musical ideas, there's at least three good Kraftwerk tunes to be found here. Not the most exciting album, but at least it's interesting - still a hell of a lot more rhythm than the pre-Autobahn releases, anyway.

Trans-Europe Express (1977)

Best Song: Trans-Europe Express/Metal on Metal

Trans-Europe Express was Kraftwerk's big statement on the musical world. Even though the following album is better, this one will probably be better known. It's really the start of dancey electronic synth-pop as we know it (actually it's probably not, but this was the first release in that genre that was based exclusively on keyboards and synthesizer). All the fun parts of the previous releases have been pretty much forgotten - the men are machines at this point, not showing emotion or limitation. I mean, think about it - what kind of electro album has THAT as a cover? This is, hands-down, the creepiest album cover of the genre, even moreso than anything Aphex Twin ever put out because this picture is REAL. Try to find a better resolution of the image and you can see that these are men who don't care about bangin' on their bongos or twiddling around on the flute anymore - the only thing they cared about was robotic precision, with not a single note out of place. Oh! There's a lyrical statement here too. They've changed the vocal style again - not really singing still, more of...say, talking on-key. The statement is about people - the way we talk to each other, the way we appear to each other. "Hall of Mirrors" is about looking in the mirror and changing what you see. And "Showroom Dummies" is about the static nature of people - they think that everyone is looking at them and that they can't change. And something about going to the club to dance. Luckily, "Showroom Dummies" is plenty danceable, using a simple rhythm that by all means should be boring, but something about the interlocking percussion (I can make the same noise with my mouth!) and synth notes makes it oddly hypnotic. "Hall of Mirrors" really isn't - still more melodic than some of the early stuff, but it's on the same page as "Radioland"...plus, it's waaaay too long. Just the same thing over and over and over and over again for eight minutes, and the lyrics come so slow that they can't save the song.

Luckily, the rest of it is great! "Europe Endless" is a nice driving tune, although a little overlong due to too much synthesizer soloing (stop gasping, it's all coordinated and pre-planned). But the hooks are great, and the song has this great vibe to it, particularly the high-pitched synthesized vocals "europe endless" that are smattered throughout. Of course, the best song is probably the title one - while stylistically it's nothing new by this point in the album, the hooks are good, the percussion is good, what's not to love? Oh, and the transition to "Metal on Metal" is superb - just a bunch of clanking percussion, to drive home to the point that this song is a virtual train ride - but you can hear sheets of metal banging against each other, wheels cranking and turning, all in a strangely rhythmic way (kind of like the cash registers and coins clanging together in Pink Floyd's "Money" just to give you an example you might have heard of). True, the whole thing is over 13 minutes, but it's still a good 13 minutes, if a little repetitive. And finally at the end you can hear the train docking, leading way to the closer "Franz Schubert". It's dedicated to this guy Franz, who I don't know a lot about (I learned about this composer in a class last semester but I didn't really care about him). It uses a very similar keyboard line to "Europe Endless", but there's no percussion - just a bunch of orchestra stuff that sounds like it's being played from a mellotron, but it's really not (apparently Kraftwerk never used one, so I have no idea what's making the noise).

So anyways, if you like electronic music, you'll probably come across this album at some point in time. Not Kraftwerk's absolute best album (although a strong case could easily be made around it) due to (once again) too few total musical ideas, but it's still an essential one, being that it pretty much revolutionized dance music. Ask anyone (particularly Afrika Bambaataa) and they'll tell you the same thing!

The Man Machine (1978)

Best Song: Neon Lights

Kraftwerk's songwriting peak, this takes all of Kraftwerk's strengths - strong sense of melody writing, steady percussion, and clean production - and puts it all together in a tight package devoid of flaws or even a remotely human touch. This is Kraftwerk at their most robotic (and it doesn't help that the first song is called "The Robots") that explores what might happen if man and machine somehow combined. Well, they've captured the music perfectly, but exactly how good can this be? I haven't seen many reviewers give this a full-on perfect rating because they really can't...save for Alex Harris who thinks it's the only album deserving of a perfect rating. The flaw is it's too perfect - every song is not only melodically strong (no "Hall of Mirrors" this time), but also perfectly executed. Hutter doesn't sound human, even when he's not using a vocoder. Strange, because one song ("The Model") is full-on synth-pop, which made it a hit in 1982 when people started listening to synth-pop. It's easy to see why it's a favorite among bands to cover - the synth riff would actually work on guitar pretty well! And there's even verses to sing!

In some ways, they even try to emulate more-or-less regular things to do in music with some of the songs. "Neon Lights" and "The Robots" are nearly disco, with the former even having some extended jamming in the looooong, drawn out coda! And I don't mind any of it...it's so happy-sounding, so driving, that you'd have to wonder why you'd grab your copy of Autobahn for the highway instead of this. But it's still missing the very essence of what music should be, which might explain all the less-than perfect ratings it gets. It's like...anyone remember all those weird 'robot' programs that they made for computers, where you could 'chat' with the robot? And the program was designed to give human-sounding responses, be swayed by human-like emotions (it would get angry if you kept insulting it, because God knows that's all we did with 'em), and yet it's just not real. Imagine a perfect one of those programs - it has all the answers, but does it have opinions? Like, say, even though the Cleveland Browns don't stand a chance of ever making the Super Bowl in the next hundred years, what if the Browns were his favorite team anyway? What I'm trying to say is this - buy this album, it's an essential, all the songs are amazing (except "Spacelab" and "Metropolis" which are merely very good), but don't expect so much as even a real-world sound...like the clanking of metal bars on "Metal on Metal"...or even fake-real instruments like the fake orchestra on "Franz Schubert".

Computer World (1981)

Best Song: POCKET CALCULATOR

Not really synth-pop anymore, is it? No, this is techno, way before that sort of thing even existed, resulting in a huge hit among Kraftwerk fans. It's music you can dance to, but would probably be too embarrassed to do so, because like pretty much every Kraftwerk release, this sounds horribly dated by now, even so much that the good songs like "Pocket Calculator" are actually really funny to listen to in this day and age. It was my first Kraftwerk purchase, and it was hard to believe that not only did this sound so similar, but so...uh...ancient, until I realized that this came out almost 25 years ago. Compare it to the stuff that Orbital was doing in 1991 and you'll see that this really ain't so much different after all.

Of course, you also have to account for the fact that if not for this album, Orbital might not even exist at all. I mean, it all starts here, doesn't it? The percussion is mostly the same as the new albums, but just listen to those synthesized hand claps pretty much dictate what this genre would sound like 20 years later! Speaking of percussion, boy is it annoyingly sharp sometimes (but that's what makes it catchy). And what about "Numbers", then? Well, now it just sounds like a generic dance song with almost no real substance (unless you 'count' a bunch of numbers being counted in different languages), but this beat has stuck around for how long now? Where would the subgenre 'acid' be without this song anyway? Plus, it's addictive...others may have done this sort of thing better, but doesn't "Numbers" capture the very essence of it all?

As you've probably guessed, this is a concept album about computers doing everything in the future. Why, if I was a computer, I'd LOVE this album! The word "computer" shows up pretty much in every track..."Computer World 1", "Computer World 2", "Home Computer", "Computer Love", uh..."It's More Fun to Computer", "Pocket Computer". Oh, and "Numbers" too. Say, did you know that the only operation that a computer can do is add numbers and that's it (well, it can compare numbers too)? Even your "Pocket Calculator" calculates 356*204 by adding the number 356 to itself 204 times. Besides the future of techno, the album also predicts the future of computers (if programming your "Home Computer" is the only way to bring yourself into the future). Oh, and the song "Computer Love" predicts the future of dating (and the soundtrack to the blockbuster Nintendo 64 game "Bomberman: Heroes") - it's done with a computer! Were these guys visionaries, or what?

Unfortunately, when you really look at it, you get another case of a Trans-Europe Express here - seven tracks, but both title tracks are really the same thing (just one flows off of "Numbers"), and the last two tracks are pretty much identical as well. The melodies are all pretty strong, although "Computer Love" is the only one that comes close to being as moving as "Neon Lights" or "Franz Schubert". Even then, the stuff's still as lifeless as you'd expect - granted, it's not really as cold and heartless as some modern-day techno can be, because it doesn't try to force you do dance like some of those less-than-skilled DJs do. You can totally chill to "Home Computer" or "Computer Love" (and pretty much relax and do whatever you want), or you can bust a move (9 out of 10 times it's probably the robot anyways) if you like! Anyways, essential Kraftwerk, particularly if you're one of those 'techno' guys (and you know what I mean).

Tour de France (1983)

I'm really only including this for completeness, as it's just a three-song single and all three songs are really the same thing. First song, a radio mix, second song, the full version, and third song, some remix that's really not much of one. Luckily, the song itself is pretty good - once again, very melodic, something like a Computer World outtake if I've ever heard one. Not that it should be, it's an interesting enough single, using even a slap bass (not a real one). And more of that sharp, sharp percussion! Don't worry if you didn't get it this time around - they'd eventually re-release this track down the road.

Electric Cafe (1986)

Best Song: The Telephone Call

Originally called Technopop, this album was supposed to have come out a while ago as a follow-up to Computer World, but a bicycle accident that nearly killed Hutter stilled things quite a bit. Supposedly this was going to have the song "Tour de France" and it really could have used it - this time there's still that lack of ideas, but instead of just letting the music speak for itself they try to cover it up. So if a song does have a good part (like the slap-bass in "Techno Pop" and the chorus of "The Telephone Call"), it plays it for only like 15 or so seconds before moving on to something more boring...like constant jamming of stupid hooks until you just give up on the whole thing. This is likely to happen on Side 1, with three songs that make up one big but not overblown piece called "Musique Non-Stop". Okay, so the beginning part of 'boing', 'boom', and 'tschak' ('ping') is pretty cool for the first few seconds. It's the kind of thing that sounds like a parody of the genre, except this is almost 20 years old. Oh, and a couple of years after this type of music became widespread..."The Model" became a hit in 1982, remember? Regardless, this is still nothing new - they basically started innovating and decided to knock off Computer World, except not only were there other bands like the Pet Shop Boys and Depeche Mode who were doing the same thing by now, but also the Kraftwerk tunes just weren't very good. If this were an album full of...say, five minutes of "Musique Non-Stop", then "The Telephone Call", "Tour de France", and some other quality material, it would be no problem. After all, who would expect someone as innovative as Kraftwerk to keep on inventing new genres like it was their job? But the material is just weak, which is why you'd probably be more entertained by something like Autobahn or Radio-Activity than this.

I'd like to say that the problem is just a endless supply of jamming out measure after measure of the same notes over and over again, but it has something to do with the fact that they've really forgotten how to write a short, simple hook, like the ones on "Home Computer" or "The Man-Machine". There's only two good ones on the whole album, and one of them is really far buried in the otherwise boring "Telephone Call" (sung by Bartos! You mean these guys have different voices!) An edit of the song was actually decent, but as it is, there's a lot of that "this is boring, can we move on?" that seems to follow a lot of Kraftwerk tracks...I mean, the ending just drags on FOREVER!! Like they needed that much time to get across the point that they've been leaving the phone off the hook and recording whatever came out.

Anyways, the strangest (and funniest) thing on here is the proto-J-Lo "Sex Object" which was just begging for radio play (and is pretty much being reincarnated into about a million different radio hits by Beyonce and J-Lo and whoever else is on the radio and sassy and black these days). Synthesized violins, synthesized guitar (which does nothing for the song, by the way), and actual verses! The lyrics are pretty much just "I don't want to be/your sex object/I've had enough/and that's a fact". And such is the end of Kraftwerk - I mean just look at the Trans-Europe Express cover again (or this one) and tell me if you can find the "Sex Object"! Why, I even remember Emerson, Lake, and Palmer committing a much-too-late suicide by doing the same thing!

This is just dance music for the sake of dance music that you're not going to want to dance to. And how come this took so long to come out anyways? True, Kraftwerk never had a real creative explosion or were never very prolific in output. I mean, Computer World took three years to come out and that's only five electronic songs. But at least it was innovative! And then it got even worse, with them writing the same amount of material, only five songs (if you count "Tour de France", because the whole "Musique Non-Stop" thing only counts once), in five years! And only one of them was good! This slow pace eventually made Bartos and Flur very frustrated, who would soon become replaced by Fritz Hilpert and Henning Schmitz (and a few temps).

The Mix (1991)

Best Song: Radioactivity

So the year is 1991, and understandably Kraftwerk was a little jealous to see that this style of music they invented was actually taking off! And what do they do? Record another five half-assed dance tunes? Well...sort of. Instead of trying to pump out another Electric Cafe, the krauts stick to what works, being their extensive back catalog. Basically, this is an attempt to update their sound, and while it isn't going to blow you away with how much different it was than the originals (this is 1991, not 2001), at the very least Kraftwerk was able to make their sound a lot more modernized than before, and actually were able to catch up to the sounds of the early 90's. While only a small amount of this is actually better than its predecessor, it's not as though you could really expect them to outdo their best work at this point. The album draws mostly on Computer World tracks, including all of them in some form save for the title tracks and "Numbers", and then includes the best song from all of their post-Ralf and Florian albums. Which means that The Man-Machine is only represented exactly once, opening with a really dancey "The Robots", which adds several new hooks to an already great song. Oh, they've pretty much forgone the whole minimalism thing by this point - they mostly try to add more and more synths over what they already had, making for a lot of stupid jamming that makes the album boring in places. They realized that they can do all sorts of new things now, so why not? The percussion really isn't as dorky and choppy as before either, with most of the songs taking on that generic 4/4 dance beat (boom sssst boom ssst), which does detract from the catchiness factor a bit.

Regardless, most of the material remains good. "Pocket Calculator" is now a jaunty house track, forgoing the original hook for one that accents the beats a little more. Plus, he's not merely stating that he's the operator and he's got a pocket calculator, he's announcing it, which is actually a big difference because it takes away from the (intentional?) humor of the song. But it comes right back on once they do "Dentaku" - the Japanese "Pocket Calculator"! Cuuuute! Okay, let's see...the new 9-minute "Autobahn" is pretty cool. It never needed a whole side of an album to make its point anyway, with all the sections of the original being represented, but it doesn't feel rushed at all. "Trans-Europe Express" stays pretty true to the original, with the beginning really making me appreciate just how perfect the percussion fits in, but once again, it's the "Metal on Metal" part that I like the most, even if the sheets of metal clanging together seem a little toned down. There's also a new "Abzug" part, which isn't actually new but is just a separate index for the last part of "Trans-Europe Express". And now I get to announce the real winner! It's "Radioactivity", which turns from a slow, boring more mellow track with a good hook into a pounding dance one! It's faster, it's meaner, the vocals are way better (Kraftwerk was still the best at vocal manipulation by this point), and the message is way clearer than it was. There's a new voice adding the sites of nuclear explosions, and the lyrics are even cooler sounding than before! The delivery of "Chain reaction and mutation/contaminated population" is actually sung instead of just being lifeless, making it even a little scary! Oh, I like the "discovered by Madame Curie" line now too - I thought it showed a lack of ideas for lyrics, but Madame Curie is really a cool paradox - she discovered radioactivity, and then it killed her! And now it's killing millions!

Speaking of things that "kill", some of this really doesn't, not the least of which is the shitty version of "Computer Love" they must have thought you wanted to hear. This time it's way too dancey, like it had gotten postponed to Electric Cafe or something. Oh, and ending the album with "Music Nonstop" wasn't exactly the best idea - losing the slap bass lines kinda killed the song in the first place. At least it's relatively short...only six minutes instead of a whole side. That plus a little too much pointless meandering during the middle sections of a lot of the songs makes me give this a modest 3 1/2 stars...it's better than everything but the classic three albums, but by that time you've already got eight of the eleven tracks on here, so you might as well get the other available studio albums first.

Expo 2000 (1999)

Apparently the pace of "1 song every year" wants quite working out for them so they decided to wait eight years before recording any new material (remember I'm counting The Mix here). Actually, the story is pretty funny...what happened was that the band was commissioned 400,000 Marks to do a jingle for the televised Expo 2000, and what they got what just a three second clip of a processed voice saying "Expo 2000". But it was available in six different languages! Anyways, that caused a huge controversy that apparently politicians even got involved in! They soon released a single containing their new track, called "Expo 2000", which, frankly is just a modernized Electric Cafe-type song, although admittedly it's a little better than anything on that album. There's two hooks, but the neat synth part in the beginning is definitely the coolest. The song just meanders on for a while (keep in mind, if not for the greatest hits release 1974-2004 I wouldn't know any of this...my copy of Expo 2000 is only remixes, leaving it up to me to figure out how the original sounded), but does at least have sort of a "Computer World" vibe going on in the lyrics. Thank God I have six remixes of the thing to sit through! Orbital do a good job with theirs, adding the modern beats that the original really needed. Francois K and Rob Rives turn out a reeeeally long mix with slap bass and lots of generic techno beats and quite frankly it isn't very good at all. DJ Ronaldo is obviously someone who was influenced by Kraftwerk in the past and returns a mix with lots of jamming and random synth notes throughout. The other three mixes are thankfully shorter, mostly sounding just like B-sides with the "Expo 2000" vocal samples piled over. I do like the heavy, heavy bass in the UR Infiltrated Mix, mainly because it's actually fun to listen to for the entire 3 minutes! And the Ur Thought 3 Mix is kinda neat, with all those washed notes scattered around, but whatever. It's not like this is essential, or anything other than a throw-off to the collectors that proves that at least they weren't completely inactive for the last eight years.

Tour de France Soundtracks (2003)

Best Song: Vitamin, if you don't count Tour de France

So four years after their last single, twelve years after their last release, seventeen years since their last album of new material, and twenty-two years after the band actually did something of value, Kraftwerk decide that maybe, as long as they were still together, maybe they could release a little bit of new material? It took some rounded number of the anniversary of the actual Tour de France for this to come about, because when I think of Kraftwerk, I think of bikes (???). The album itself is easily the most inconsistent Kraftwerk's ever released, even more frustrating than...well, Kraftwerk's old, out-of-print self-titled debut. The good thing is that there's two really great songs on here - "Vitamin" is a perfect single for the band, with a catchy melody, and lots of cool background noises that are actually rhythmic, of all things! A lot of people say "well it's just a second-rate 'Pocket Calculator'" but I don't see it. And secondly, there's a re-do of the 1983 single, "Tour de France", which, although it loses a lot of its sharp percussion, is still better than the already-great original.

The bad news is that Kraftwerk once again get over-indulgent, and once again there's a huge lack of ideas that makes the album artificially thin. See, there ARE 12 tracks here...the same amount as Radio-Activity, but this has even less actual songs that I want to listen to than that one did. The first...oh, FIVE tracks are all the same half-developed idea called "Tour de France Etape"...sure, the synths sound a little modern (keep in mind that the middle of the 90's saw HUGE leaps for electronic music, so this sounds dated despite the fact that it's new), but they're only used to cover the fact that there's almost no melody! Just some kind of acid wash. The only good part is in Etape 3, which has a neat (but all too short) interlude that distracts from the main 'theme'. Oh, not to mention that the vocals are at their worst ever. The processing effect is so annoying...to make another reference to Alex Harris, he says it sounds like a "robo-frog who has a cold". Yep, almost the vocals are croaked and (on a good day) glitched up but never help the song in the least bit. Vocal hooks? Nothing really besides "A B C D Vitamin". Especially not on the 'single' "Aero Dynamik" which is just two notes played over and over again! Good thing it's only five minutes long...

...but suddenly we get a RECAP of all the exciting moments of "Aero Dynamik", called "Titanium"! Uhhh, what? That's like if "Showroom Dummies" had another three minute track tacked on that was just those two notes...what's the point? Did they want to extend the time so that it would fit on double vinyl or something? Because it barely does...the album is 55 minutes long (and some Genesis single LPs reach over 51 minutes), but gorsh do I wish it was only 35, because there's no reason for "Titanium", so many of the Etapes, the 5-9th minutes of "La Forme" (which, despite being the same thing over and over again, at least has a decent melody), and the "La Forme" reprise "Regeneration". Good Lord, these songs are long! Did they not remember what happened on The Man-Machine? How the repetition was at least of good hooks, didn't stagnate, and all the jamming went somewhere?

Despite that, it's not a total toss-off, but comparing the two side-by-side, I regret to inform you that this really isn't much better than Electric Cafe - this album does have at least two good songs, but then again, at least the Cafe was only 35 minutes long. Actually, I'd rather listen to Electric Cafe all the way through, but since there still are those two good tracks I'll give them the same rating.

Minimum-Maximum (2005)

Best Song: Trans Europe Express/Metal on Metal

A live album from the 2004-2005 tour that totally took me by surprise - I have several lo-fi bootlegs that I hardly listen to, but nothing like this. If you have no idea what these guys would be live, imagine this. Four guys, dressed in suits, come on stage, and stand behind computers. Then they stand there for two hours and YOU hear Kraftwerk's greatest hits. Maybe this isn't the most exciting thing to SEE (although apparently they use good visuals), but to hear it, it's amazing! Here's what you get - the title tracks of Autobahn, Radio-Activity, and Trans-Europe Express, most of the songs from Man-Machine and Computer World, the "Musique Non-Stop" thing from Electric-Cafe, a renamed "Expo 2000" called "Planet of Visions", and, of course, just about everything from Tour de France Soundtracks, sans "La Forme". I don't mind this much however, as all of these tracks are just better live...they're a little shorter, have a tad more energy, and are placed between some really good tracks, so who cares? Except for "Vitamin", that one is a lot different from the studio version because they bend all the notes and it ROCKS! The sound is sooo updated...no longer are there primitive beeps and bloops, but rather modern-sounding ones! Okay, almost every track here is copied from The Mix, and it's hard to tell exactly HOW these are much different...the mixes are different, the noises are sometimes changed, and sometimes the singing is live. But what really makes the difference is the SOUND QUALITY...this doesn't sound live, but since it is I'll say this is one of the best mixes I've ever heard. My subwoofer LOVES this album, it goes nuts every time I play it! Especially "Trans-Europe Express"...keeping the "Abzug" part was a great move, but the transition to "Metal on Metal" is so fantastic, it sounds like the metal isn't coming from your speakers but rather being crashed right in front of you! I also enjoyed "Pocket Calculator", which goes fast, and Hutter sings the operator lines almost like he's in the Sex Pistols! Then it moves to "Dentaku", in a TOTALLY different venue in Tokyo, but the transition is flawless! You'll only notice the difference because the crowd cheers for it again, and you get to hear a crowd of ten thousand (presumably drunk) Japanese singing along to the nonsense lyrics! Complaints, any? Not really...it's a bit heavy on the Tour de France material, which means there's nothing like "Europe Endless" or "Airwaves" (yeah, right), but I don't mind. More of a definitive career overview than The Mix, making this a really good first purchase, unless of course you can find a German import of 1974-2004, which has all of Kraftwerk's good songs on it anyway, in edited form, which is actually a big plus! Not that I don't mind sitting through 9 minutes of "Europe Endless" on the actual album, but for most of Kraftwerk's songs, 3 minutes edits are practically the same as 9-minute originals, so if you can find it, get it, even though it ALSO overextends on Tour de France tracks.

Hey! I've got a little more to review yet, including two Karl Bartos solo albums, and an album of salsa covers.

Links:

This Kraftwerk FAQ helped me get a few facts about the band

Since I mentioned Alex Harris' Kraftwerk page twice, might as well link it. Read his Computer World review!