Kraftwerk Re-Mastered

Remastering an artists back catalogue has become de rigueur for anybody with a sizeable back catalogue or longevity in the music business. Remastering really came of age with Jimmy Page when he took control of the remastering of the four CD set that would become known, with such great originality, as Led Zeppelin - the Boxed Set.

Of course this summer has been dominated, in release and PR terms, by the release of the Fab Fours back catalogue but the hugely influential German band Kraftwerk have snuck under the radar by releasing eight of their studio albums in remastered form. 'Autobahn' (1974), 'Radio-Activity' (1975), 'Trans Europe Express' (1977), 'The Man Machine' (1978), 'Computer World' (1981), 'Techno Pop' (1986), 'The Mix' (1991) and 'Tour De France' (2003) are the albums in question. All eight albums are also available in a Box Set called "The Catalogue."

Any Kraftwerk fan will spot two albums in that list whose inclusion which may well confuse the casual purchaser: The Mix and Tour De France. The Mix was a remixed album of the bands 'greatest hits' and Tour De France was recorded, mixed and released in 2003 and therefore didn't need any remastering in the first place!

The big difference between Kraftwerk's release this month and that of The Beatles back catalogue is of course the fact that in the case of the former the founder and sole surviving original member of the band, Ralf Hutter, has been involved in every aspect of this Kling Klang release from overseeing the remastering of the original tapes through to the lavishly created packaging that accompanies each album.

As Hutter puts it on the bands official website: "It's a piece of work that just had to be done. The quality (of previous CDs) wasn't always as it should have been...especially the artwork was just cut down from the LP format or scanned down, especially in America. Now we found the time to finish it, and we're very happy. You have everything from Kraftwerk in high (quality) formats."

First out of the box, so to speak, is Autobahn.

Whoever came up with the idea back in 1975 that a three minute edit of the albums title track should be released as a single in the U.K was a genius. Those three minutes opened up a whole new musical genre, Krautrock, to the ears of a thirteen year old who was restless for something with a harder edge than the sound Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson were producing from their keyboards.

I have bored many people with my description of the track Autobahn being the greatest single piece of electronic based music for as long as I can remember but I stick by my pseuds corner description of it being the closest we have come so far to synth-jazz. I've had this album on my mp3 player for years and if and when the random play selector chooses it I can guarantee it brings a smile to my face. Constantly returning to the opening motif during the first ten minutes of the track it then takes a diversion and begins a journey away from what you'd expect, it sounds like nothing that came before, there are no musical references by which to judge it. The most exciting thing to my young ears then and to my middle aged ears now is the use of stereo switching from one speaker to another, it's what headphones were invented for. When the album was originally released back in November 1974 this track took up the whole of the first side, coming in at a whopping twenty two minutes and forty two seconds but there's no fat on it, nothing is wasted, there's no filler. At just after thirteen minutes the familar "Fahn fahn fahn auf der autobahn," refrain is revisted and hangs around for the next couple of minutes before that delicious dissolving electronic cymbal sound leads us down the hard shoulder with the slightly weird sound of Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider speaking the "Fahn fahn etc," refrain. There is a warmth and richness to the sound of this track which makes me grateful that digital engineering was invented, it may have taken thirty five years to sound this good but boy was it worth it.

The second side of the old vinyl album began with Kometenmelodie 1 and 2 - which translates as Comet Melody 1 and 2. These could be viewed as two parts of a suite but they are essentially one idea with two outcomes, the Sliding Doors of electronica. Nathalie (oh yes, my child and wife have suffered for my art) thinks that the first part of this two-parter sounds like the Mighty Bhoosh and she has a point, it's very theatrical, very dramatic, very Teutonic, quite possibly the soundtrack to a film never made. The sound whistles and hisses as if we are watching Dr. Caligari preparing to be carted off to the asylum, but there are lighter touches and it wouldn't surprise me if there's a copy of this album lurking somewhere in the Sigur Ros collection. If Kometenmelodie One is all about impending doom and the strange things that come out at night then Kometenmelodie Two is the villagers ringing the church bells, celebrating the death of the evil dead, this is Kraftwerk wigging out, it's the musical equivalent of watching your uncle dancing at a wedding - but in a good way!

Track Four on the CD release is Mitternacht (Midnight). Now for those of you out there in Blogsphere who don't already think I was a strange child this track proves it for me. Years ago my Dad bought a stereo system that was way out of our league, it had more bells and whistles than a festival of Morris Dancers but for me the crucial thing it had was Short Wave radio. I heard this track playing one Saturday afternoon on an Israeli radio station and was captivated. It sounded like a game of Mousetrap played on strings and a church organ, all weird noises and what sounded like a giant marble being rolled down a plastic tube followed by the hissing of a trouser press accompanied by the dripping of a huge tap.

The album closes with Morgenspaziergang (Morning Walk) which begins with what sounds like an electronic sparrow followed by a flute. Now I know that I can get a bit overblown in my praise sometimes, objectivity goes out of the window in certain areas but this track always does something weird to me. The track has a very pastoral feel to it and ends with the repeating of the Autobahn melody but then, to my ears, it leads into the Allegretto from Beethoven's Symphony No.6 in F Op 68 - 'Pastoral.' It's possible to segue one into another, the piano at the end of the Kraftwerk track giving way to the flute that begins the final movement of the symphony.

If you like electronic rock music there are few albums that come better than this, if you've never heard any of Kraftwerk's music where have you been?