The
annual Vivid Festival in Sydney has just come to the end of its spectacular near
three-week-long run. Described as an extravaganza of “light, music, and ideas”,
it really does look like a must see event.
This
year’s Vivid Festival was made all the more exciting by the fact that legendary
German technocrats Kraftwerk performed EIGHT times in just four days at the
Sydney Opera House, rolling out what is otherwise known as The Catalogue –
eight exceptional albums (one per gig, two gigs per day/night) from Autobahn
(1974) through to Tour de France (2003). I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t
totally jealous when I learned that local ‘Stuff’ music blogger Simon Sweetman had
attended. Simon’s experience is well documented here …
Anyway, it got me thinking more and more about Kraftwerk. The organisers of Vivid must have been pinching themselves when they secured Kraftwerk’s participation in the event because no other musical outfit across the globe (individual, band, DJ, or “operator”) could possibly provide a better fit for the “lights, music, and ideas” ethos than Kraftwerk. Across the past four decades this German phenomenon has been at the forefront of the electronic music evolution, proving instrumental in the development of many sub-genres, not the least of which have been Hip hop and techno.
Beyond
the obvious untouchable pop culture markers such as Elvis Presley, The Beatles,
Bob Dylan, and the Velvet Underground, it is doubtful there has ever been a
more influential act than Kraftwerk. The group’s longevity and ability to set
new trends knows no bounds. As a unit, they continue to astound.
With
that in mind, I revisited a couple of key Kraftwerk albums in my collection and
wrote a brief review for each (below). I also stumbled across a collection
of fairly cool freely downloadable Kraftwerk related mixtapes featuring the
group and a whole range of different artists as compiled by DJ Food here ...
Kraftwerk – The Man Machine (1978)
The
Man Machine (or Die Mensch Maschine) is one of several truly great Kraftwerk
albums released during the group’s heyday of the late Seventies/early Eighties.
With
just six tracks clocking in at around 36 minutes, The Man Machine is also one
of Kraftwerk’s shortest albums, but with typical German efficiency
(generalisation alert!) there is no shortage of quality with the “band” (are
Kraftwerk really a band, or a group of IT geeks?) somehow managing to squeeze
as much into those 36 minutes as possible.
There’s
no real need for me to wax on about what this sounds like – Kraftwerk being the
synth Gods they are – but this is the album that gave us ‘The Robots’, ‘Neon
Lights’, and the very belated hit single ‘The Model’. It also gave us perhaps
the most iconic album cover of Kraftwerk’s entire career.
Kraftwerk
– Computer World (1981)
Like
so much of Kraftwerk’s storied output, Computer World (aka Computer Welt) was
light years ahead of its time.
The
album – following on from the success of 1978’s The Man Machine – was several
years in the making, yet it could have been made any time between its 1981
release date and say, the turn of the new Millennium some 20 years later, and still
sound relatively fresh.
For
a bunch of German cycling obsessives to dedicate an entire album to this new
electronic phenomenon seemed rather indulgent in the extreme.
But
of course, we now know different. If they (computers) haven’t exactly taken
over the world, then they most certainly have taken over the lives of a large
portion of its inhabitants - which is exactly what Kraftwerk were banging on
about all those years ago.
Highlights:
‘Computer World’ (both parts 1 & 2), ‘Pocket Calculator’, and ‘Computer
Love’.
No comments:
Post a Comment