Kraftwerk Remastered - Parts Five and Six

By the end of the 1970's and the beginning of the early 1980's the first flush of the punk movement had begun to recede, the artists who looked likely to hang around for the long haul were those who would have made it in any era: Elvis Costello, Paul Weller, The Cure, Siouxsie and The Banshees, The Clash. Away from the, mainly, two guitars, drums and vocal line-up however a quiet change was taking place in popular music.

The Kraftwerk albums Trans Europe Express and Man-Machine had a huge impact on the British music scene, an impact that happened to coincide with social changes (the rise of Thatcherism) and technological changes (samplers, synthesisers etc) and electronic instruments were suddenly affordable and you didn't need a warehouse in which to rehearse, keyboards had got smaller. The period from 1979 through to the end of 1981 saw artists such as Gary Numan (with and without Tubeway Army), Ultravox, Soft Cell, The Human League, OMD, Heaven 17 and Simple Minds release hit singles and albums whose very existence owed, in some cases, everything to Kraftwerk.

Depeche Mode’s Martin Gore in Jonathan Miller’s biography of the band ‘Stripped: Depeche Mode’ says, “Obviously we were influenced by Kraftwerk, but there was a bit of a scene going on then [1979]. There were quite a few bands like The Human League”. Andy Fletcher added, “There was this new scene with, I suppose, the early Human League and Kraftwerk – people were really getting into synthesisers.” David Gahan admits to listening to “a lot of Bowie, Roxy Music, Kraftwerk, stuff like that” too. For him the German quartet had “instant melody”. The band would pay homage in particular with the song ‘World in My Eyes’ from 1990's ‘Violator’.

I saw Ultravox play the Southampton Gaumont (later the Mayflower) at the end of 1980 and the band had completely changed its stage act since Midge Ure had replaced John Foxx. They had adopted, either consciously or through some sort of osmosis, the Kraftwerk stage persona. Gigs were no longer about the lead guitarist and vocalist jumping and leaping about, all four members of the band were dressed similarly and made very few movements, the only concession to the traditional rock concert being the light show, the use of synchornised lighting effects during 'Vienna' left a particular memory for me.

It's against this changing musical backdrop that in May 1981 Kraftwerk released Computer World an album that is still contemporary in feel and which retains the bands knack of composing simple yet brilliant melodies. This is probably the album that would influence electronic music for the next twenty years, it would also reach beyond the confines of that particular genre influencing black and dance music and artists as different as Coldplay, Madonna, New Order and Devo. Of course being Kraftwerk it's a concept album, and being this particular band there's no fat on the tracks and the seven tracks come in at a combined thirty three minutes, proof of the old adage about coming on stage saying something and then leaving the audience wanting more.

Kraftwerk weren't just muscial visionaries, the lyrics of the opening (and title track) suggest that Ralf Hutter could see what was coming on a bigger stage. The references to "Business, numbers, money, people," whilst also name checking the likes of the FBI, Scotland Yard and Deutsche Bank suggest that Ralf Hutter was ahead of his time in believeing that more information would mean more access by Governments into our so-called 'private lives.'

Pocket Calculator is up next and this track even manages to sample a casio calculator. As with the opening track the lyrics are scarily correct in their futuristic outlook, the reference to "Pressing down a special key, It plays a little melody," herald the arrival of a generation of bedroom producers. The other thing that strikes me about this track, and I've asked other people to see whether or not I'm alone here, is that it sounds so similar to tracks on Depeche Modes debut album Speak and Spell. Computer World was recorded between 1978 and 1980 but wasn't released until May 1981, Speak and Spell was recorded between May and August 1981 and was the only Mode album to feature Vince Clarke, there were still signs of the Kraftwerk influence long after Clarke left but precious little Kraftwerk to be heard in the music of Yazoo or Erasure. Just to confuse matters further this track, and Home Computer, feature a language toy manufactured by Texas Instruments which produces sounds similar to radio jingles, the name of the toy? Speak and Spell.

Numbers is the third track and a multi-linguists wet dream, it counts the numbers one to eight in English, German, French, Spanish, Russian and Japanese. All this over a melody and bass line that sound as if they have just been received by satellite from a galaxy far, far away. The bass line would of course make another appearance on the ground breaking track 'Planet Rock' - groundbreaking that is if you didn't recognise the bassline!

Computer World 2 almost cuts across the end of Numbers and is simply a revision of the opening tracks melody line. During the 1990's and beyond there was a growing vogue for 'chill out' tracks and there's no doubt that the melody here was suited to that environment.

Computer Love would probably have stayed a favourite track of Kraftwerk fans and nobody else had it not been for Chris Martin lifting the riff for use on the Coldplay track Talk. The lyrics here paint a bleak picture of mankind being cast adrfit as he is overwhelmed by techonology, the lines: "Another lonely night, Stare at the TV screen, I don't know what to do,I need a rendezvous," about as grim as they get. There's almost the sense that the band themselves having committed to the use almost exclusively of computer controlled instruments in their career can see the disadvantages of a computer controlled environment.

Home Computer is classic Kraftwerk, the simple melody and the bassline that would become a feature of dance music over the next decade. The sound of this track is something we would take for granted over the next twenty years, the looping melody, the electronic drums, the sound at its most basic harks back to Radio Activity whilst at the same time sounding completely new. The drum loops and crashing synth have been copied on numerous tracks over the years but this is the original and still the best, if white boys stole rock and roll from the poor blacks those same blacks returned to the scene of the crime and nicked all of the eighties dance riffs from this one track.

It's More Fun To Compute again has a bassline that we have become so used to over the years that it's easy to forget where it originated. Electronic music was never purer yet also retaining a musical depth unheard of among the bands contemporaries at the time. You can hear this particular sound on albums by Japan, Human League and in particular Simple Minds before they became a stadium band in the mid-eighties, in fact one of the best examples of Kraftwerk's influence on British music is on Simple Minds album Sons And Fascination/Sister Feelings Call, the track Theme For Great Cities is for my money one of the great instrumental tracks of all time, by any band. You can hear it here

This album completes a trilogy of the bands best work, the influence of Trans Europe Express, Man-Machine and Computer World can still be seen in music today. Artists rarely conceive a body of work that holds so perfectly and so consistently together over three successive albums. Dylan did it with Bringing It All Back Home,Blonde on Blonde and Highway 61 Revisted, Bowie did it with his Berlin trilogy and The Beatles did it with Help!, Rubber Soul and Revolver, there are very few others.

This album is famous (or infamous) for taking the band almost five years to record. That wasn't due to any particular tardiness on the part of the band but because Ralf Hutter injured his hand in a cycling accident. It's the final album to feature Wolfgang Flur and Karl Bartos who left because they grew tired of waiting for the band to reconvene and record more material. As I said in the review of Man-Machine this album, for me at least, sounds the most dated and the most 'of its period' of any of the bands oeuvre. I think this is possibly because of the time it took to record it, there's nothing on the album that makes me go "Wow!" There's little in the way of musical spark.

One of the tracks was used to showcase what at the time was new animation techniques, even the video was mothballed for two years whilst changes were made to the track. The video is here

So there you have it the fifth and sixth albums in the remastered back catalogue, one to go and it's a bit special, but fans would have a seventeen year wait for the next album of new material from the band.