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| Kraftwerk Minimum—Maximum Astrawerks The last thing I want to do is write a MAD magazine-type piece titled “You Know You’re A Kraftwerk Fan When...” but: When the single edit of “Autobahn” came out, I bought the sheet music and learned how to play it on the piano. And every time a new Kraftwerk album came out I bought both the domestic English version on Capitol and the German version on EMI import so I could sing along in both languages. Then of course I had to repeat the whole dual dialect procedure all over again when I upgraded from vinyl to digital. So it goes without saying that when Kraftwerk finally came to North America in 1974 on their Autobahn tour, I went to see them at Toronto’s venerable Massey Hall. And although the old joint can seat around 2,000 paying plebes, there couldn’t have been more than 700 of us in attendance, widely spread out over the ground floor and first balcony. We were the select members of an elite group and we wore our ultramodern status as a badge of honor. The few, the proud, the machines. And speaking of sparse, Kraftwerk showed why they were the reigning kings of Kling Klang by playing no music whatsoever over the speakers prior to their set. And if you think that’s minimal, the opening act that night was none other than the actual audience itself who kept amused in the otherwise silent venue by throwing a Frisbee around for well over an hour. Far too ambient for impatient clapping or chanting, we merely dished the disc around and waited. And waited. And waited. And while we waited, unbeknownst to us, the four members of Kraftwerk, having taken a wrong turn when they left their hotel, wandered aimlessly around the city’s downtown core by themselves for an hour, trying to find the venue. When they finally did arrive, the house lights went out and stayed out for the duration of the show. Totally engulfed in darkness for 90 minutes, the only source of illumination in Massey Hall came from the four small evenly spaced neon boxes which—just as they did on the back of the Ralf & Florian album—rested on the floor in front of each dimly lit figure, spelling out his first name in florid calligraphy: RALF... KARL... WOLFGANG... FLORIAN. But the biggest surprise of the night by far was when we were treated to a half hour number we’d never heard before—one that simulated a long hypnotic train ride. Ah hah, we all thought knowingly, so that’s what their next travelogue will be. And then we were all thrown for a tape loop when Radio-Aktivität came out instead of Trans Europa Express. But that’s what made Kraftwerk such a vital force back then: they were so far ahead of their time that they could pick and choose at their leisure how they next wanted to permanently alter the face of electronic music. And they succeeded because no one ever came close to sounding like them. Not Tangerine Dream, not Cluster, Neu, Klaus Schultz, Conrad Schnitzler or anyone else. While their contemporaries were busy mapping the ambient landscape, Kraftwerk were forging ahead of the pack by crafting a series of clever concept albums which, more often than not, consisted of an interconnected network of tightly knit songs whose focused melodic repetitive sequences were anchored by a driving coloratura of percussion. Number one in a field of one, Kraftwerk were far and away above and beyond what anyone else was even thinking of doing electronically. That’s why, unlike such second string drone clones as Jean Michel Jarre, they remain so influential that they’re still owed a heavy debt of thanks by anyone who so much as even looks at an electronic keyboard these days. Which isn’t to say that Kraftwerk’s entire back catalogue is one of unadulterated genius. If Autobahn is their breakthrough In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida and Die Mensch-Machine their inconsistent Aladdin Sane, then surely Electric Café must rank as their disappointing Before And After Science: that pivotal point when the idea well ran dry and rote repetition ruled the roost. But there’s no denying that Kraftwerk recorded at least two undisputed peerless works of art: 1975’s Radio-Aktivität, their purest album whose understated tone was perfected by the digital removal of the vinyl format’s imposed demarcation point; and 1981’s prescient Computerwelt, an uncanny album that, far from being an embarrassing anachronism, only grows in relevance with each passing day. What’s extraordinary about this enduring high level of respect is that it’s been steadfastly maintained over the years despite the fact that Ralf and Florian took the unprecedented step of voluntarily withdrawing from the genre back in 1986. Now if you can financially afford to pedal around your sound lab for the better part of two decades trying to figure out what to perfect next, then more power to you. Just don’t expect the hired percussionists in your band to twiddle their drums and wait that long to see what you’ve got up your sleeve. Which is why it wasn’t a surprise to see original quartet members Karl Bartos and Wolfgang “I Was A Robot” Flur replaced on the comeback single “Expo 2000” by two new Kraftklones in the form of Fritz Hilpert and Henning Schmitz. And while I was initially inclined to consign Minimum—Maximum to the same sonic scrap heap as the underwhelming Tour De France Soundtracks, upon second listen I began to perceive it less as a double live souvenir and more as an actual studio album, albeit one punctuated with sporadic smatterings of audience applause. And in that context, Minimum—Maximum as a whole is a far more cohesive unit than similar seamless marathon sessions by Jeff Mills or Paul Oakenfold. Apples and oranges? Perhaps. But once again, now as then, what makes the crucial difference are the melodies because no matter how adept today’s digital deck jockeys are, what they don’t have are solid song structures to wrap their repetitions around. Even the creative constructs of a found sound expert like Steinski can wear a little thin after the tenth gimmicky vintage audio clip. Ironically, the band that never sounded like anyone else is now loose enough to confidently include distinct echoes of past peers. “Planet Der Visionen” recalls the translucent washes of 808 State, while “Vitamin” evokes trace elements of Telex and Terry Riley. But don’t go getting the idea that these are clinical note for note reproductions of their studio versions because this time around the machines have learned how to get down and do the funky clickin’. Just check out the extended pulse-generated throw downs in the middle of “Die Roboter” and “Musique Non Stop” which sound like Edgar Winter having a short circuited epileptic seizure while soloing in the middle of “Frankenstein.” For Kraftwerk, this is about as soulful as it gets. Time being of the essence, you get the Reader’s Digest condensed versions of “Autobahn” and “Trans Europa Express” that clock in at a seriously svelte nine minutes apiece. But that’s more than compensated for by the heavy revisionist versions of “Nummern” and “Radioaktivität” which are so drastically disfigured beyond recognition that you’ll need dental records to identify them. Then again, what else do you expect from a couple of nutty professors like Ralf “Wernher von” Hütter and Florian “V2” Schneider—two zany cut-ups whose idea of a good time is to insert three fake digital skips into the first 22 seconds of their new album just to drive the audiophile in you nuts. Sure it’s a dirty trick, but you know what they say: Sometimes you play with the machines and sometimes the machines play with your head.
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—Jeffrey Morgan August 2005 |
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