Kraftwerk Remastered - Part Four

Following the success of Radioactivity and Trans Europe Express the band began recording their seventh studio album towards the end of 1977. The original vinyl album consisted of three tracks on each side, with both sides lasting just over eighteen minutes in length each - not all albums were on the scale of Tales From Topographic Oceans, eighty minutes spread over two discs, back in the 1970's.

The two preceding albums were concept albums and some fans believe that Man Machine is also a concept. The story behind the album is believed to be that of man becoming a machine and each track represents one part of the endless repetitive monotony of man's very existence. I've been fascinated for as long as I can remember by the way in which pre-1960's science fiction writing, with a few notable exceptions, always portrayed each new invention as a step forward, man being replaced by machines would mean more leisure time, when in fact the harsh reality of the late 20the century was something much less rewarding - unemployment on a huge scale with damaging social consequences.

If you buy into the theory of Man Machine as a concept album then it falls somewhere between H.G Wells The Shape of Things To Come and Fritz Langs classic film Metropolis. That's to say we have conflict between man as worker and capitalism whilst believing that the only way forward is through a type of socialist utopia. Of course I could be talking (and blogging) complete bollocks although other writers have also commented on the Metropolis angle.

The one thing that strikes me about this album, and it only occurs to my mind with this album and Electric Cafe, is that the music is of its time whilst at the same time still managing to sound in parts fresh and contemporary today. The late seventies had seen Giorgio Moroder make his mark on the charts by virtue of his work, among others, with Donna Summer and the Midnight Express soundtrack which won the 1978 Academy Award for best score.

There is no doubt in my mind (or ears) that Kraftwerk and Moroder shared a common ground musically around the time this album was being recorded, just as the Bowie/Eno produced 'Berlin Trilogy (Low, Heroes and Lodger)' owes more than a passing nod to this and the previous Kraftwerk album.

Moroder was asked about Kraftwerk in 1978 and had this to say in an interview published on 9th December 1978 in the NME.

Although the horizons here are hazed. Kraftwerk certainly required something of an extra edge to compound the disco-cult success of 'Showroom Dummies' - a success which, incidentally, seems to have caught them unawares - and they may well have found what they needed in Moroder's methods.

'The Man Machine' may carry the emphatic 'Produced In West Germany' rider but the album was actually mixed by, among others, Leonard Jackson, the latter on loan from ex-Motown writer and producer Norman Whitfield's Whitfield Records. Whatever, Kraftwerk's 'Spacelab' (from 'The Man Machine') runs Moroder's sound so close a second it's hard to resist implying plagiarism on the part of the Dusseldorf Dynamen.

But does any of this matter? Yes, merely because Kraftwerk have contentiously obfuscated their work with notions of 'artistic', 'political', 'historical' and 'sociological' intent and intrigue - and they have been rapturously repaid by writers who really should know better by now for doing so.

By comparison Moroder's declared first base - making pure electronic pop - seems also charmingly, defensively banal. And yet not only has it had a far greater impact (Kraftwerk's lack of major chart success since 'Autobahn' has been signal), but it has also been haplessly absorbed into the critical caucus of 'New Europeanism'.

All of which begs questions. Are we really the robo-men-machines of Kraftwerk's 'The Robots' (and, if so, then why aren't we purchasing their product?) or do we just want to dance?

'Kraftwerk", Moroder muses, "I like their sounds very much because they are very clean, but I don't particularly like the songs. They are sometimes a little too easy in their music..."

Well whatever the inspiration or context, there is no doubt that when people think of Kraftwerk they think of this album and that iconic cover.

This is the first album on which Karl Bartos receives a writing credit (alongside Hutter and Schneider) and the two founder members were even magnanimous enough to get Emil Schult to co-write the lyrics for The Model.

The album begins with The Robots, a song about robotics. As with the previous two albums the band embrace new technology and the words, "I am your servant," and "I am you worker," are spoken in Russian through a vocoder. Here there is again a connection with Giorgio Moroder who had used a vocoder on his 1977 hit "From Here To Eternity." The provenance of the song is difficult to determine. The band were influenced by Russian art and as I have stated above by the work of Fritz Lang and were therefore receptive to the idea of humans controlling robots rather than the other way around, and yet the album and in particular this track has been stated as being the young of Germany's way of saying to the British and American influenced cultures of other Western European countries enough is enough. The Robots opens with twenty seconds of bleeping which harks back to the RadioActivity album before what is essentially a dance track begins.

Spacelab is for me the standout track on the album. Straying dangerously close to Jean Michel Jarre territory this track has one of those Kraftwerk melodies that you can't shake off and whilst its roots are firmly in the 1970's it can still hold its own some thirty two years on from the day it was recorded. The conspiracy theorists have this track down as being about the advancement of technology for domestic use. I think it's about Spacelab to be honest or rather Skylab, the NASA space station that was in orbit around the earth between 1973 and 1979, and the possibility of man living in a permanent structure orbiting the earth.

Given what I had written earlier about this albums possibly being a concept album and the influence of Fritz Lang it's not surprising that the third track is Metropolis. There's an urban myth that you can sync Wizard of Oz and Dark Side of The Moon, that's rubbish unless you have some ingested something you shouldn't have, with Kraftwerk and the 1927 silent film I think it's possible. Vangelis was apparently listening to Kraftwerk during this period and if you play this track and then the end titles to Blade Runner I think you can see the influence of the German music on the Greek composer.

The Model is probably the best known track on the album to non-Kraftwerk aficionados and it's fame came about purely by accident. It was released in the U.K three years after this album as the b-side to Computer Love (Chris Martin's favourite Kraftwerk track, but more of that another time), when those wonderful Radio One DJ's began playing the b-side in December 1981 EMI re-released the song as an A-side, the track then went to Number One in February 1982. Incidentally the band told EMI they didn't want the song to be an a-side. Showing what a perverse person I was as a teenager I sought out the German language version, ironic really given that Kraftwerk fans had waited for years for the albums to be available in English language versions!

Every Kraftwerk album up to this point has one track that just sounds great with the lights turned down. Ironically the track on Man Machine is called Neon Lights. This has one of those haunting melodies over which Ralf Hutter describes the "shimmering neon lights and at the fall of light this city is made of lights." This celebrates the journey home from work, away from the drudgery of work, back to the suburbs. Put this on the car stereo and drive across town one night allowing yourself to wallow in the lights and nine minutes of pure aural pleasure.

The Man-Machine closes the album and it begins with one of the most recognisable riffs in the history of electronic music. The track is similar to The Robots in the sense that it offers a comment of the repetitiveness of work, life etc, that might make it sound dull but that's rarely an accusation you can make about Kraftwerk's music. After five and a half minutes the album is finished.

It would be exactly three more years before the next Kraftwerk album was released, their last great masterpiece and for some their best album, Computer World. In those intervening three years the legacy of the band would manifest itself in the music of Depeche Mode, Human League, Visage. You can only wonder at how Ralf Hutter, Florian Schneider and co must have felt during the recording of Computer World between 1979 and 1980 in Dusseldorf as their music influenced another generation of record buyers.