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Could it be that Lance Armstrong
listens to energetic music whilst participating in the Tour de
France ? Could it be that the yellow jersey gets draped around
someone’s body simply because he moved his legs to the rhythm of a
Kraftwerk tune ? Having written and released the original Tour de
France tune as far away as 1983, our German bizarre friends have now
amassed some extra bits and pieces together with some remixes of the
original track which they have bundled as “Tour de France
soundtracks”. Again accompanied by their minimalistic lyrics it
becomes very clear what a huge impact the band from Düsseldorf has
on the current dance scene. Whether it’s Daft Punk or Goldfrapp, Pet
Shop Boys or Primal Scream, New Order or Orchestral Manoeuvres in
the Dark, Eurythmics or Depeche Mode, Gary Numan or Human League,
they all rate Kraftwerk as being one of their major influences.
For most of us however Kraftwerk
mainly was the band who took electronics one step further than the
cosmic world offered to us by names such as Tangerine Dream and
Klaus Schulze. Looking back at the few albums the band has now
released, the concept mainly remains the same. The band takes a
major idea and spreads this over a whole album interspersed with
sparse lyrics spoken through a wide range of vocoders and treated by
all kinds of electronics. Whether the subject is the highway as in
“Autobahn” or radio activity as in “Radio aktivität”, pocket
calculators or robots, it always works. Add to this the mystery
which surrounds every single bandmember (interviews are a scarce
phenomenon in the Kraftwerk household) and you get a band which
enthuses the masses. This time around the band has taken the
worldfamous ‘Tour de France’ as their main subject. It’s stunning
how the band has once again created a sound which perfectly evokes
the sound of the bicycle wheels and chains without sampling the
original sounds. Especially in the three different ‘étapes’ the
synths and loops kind of duplicate the speed in the main body of the
cyclists. In perfect French they recite several important topics out
of this sports discipline whilst the music perfectly depicts the
atmosphere and tention of the event.
Still heavilly tributary to the
avantgarde world of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Kraftwerk has taken their
own ‘electronic folk music’ from euro-disco to house and techno, to
synth-pop and electronica. As always the sound is as detailed as it
gets and although a lot of words and excerpts are constantly
repeated you don’t get bored at all. This to me is one of the
biggest values of Kraftwerk being that they build and build on
repeating themes yet without getting on your nerves. On the
contrary, their music is build in such a well balanced fashion that
it keeps you interested throughout, interested what will happen
next. Kraftwerk often tackles subjects which you would never imagine
could sound well when put into music. Take the song ‘Vitamin’ on
this new album which has the band recite a list of various products
whether calcium or iron, magnesium or carbo-hydrats. Give the same
ingredients to any other band and they will hand them over together
with a blank mastertape. With a song like ‘Aéro dynamik’ it also
becomes clear that what Kraftwerk offers is an ideal kit full of
goodies for the remix fans. There are plenty of possibilities to
spice up the rhythm, add bits and pieces, turn some of the sequences
around whilst keeping it in the same dancelike spirit. You could
indeed turn it into a more commercial sounding song or you can leave
it the way it is and marvel at the arty approach. After all didn’t
they release a track called ‘Tanzmusik’ on their “Ralf and Florian”
album ?
Conceived in their very own secluded
Kling Klang studios the sound of the current Kraftwerk is only an
updated version of what they recorded on their very first album
“Tone float” as released in 1970. Released under the name of
Organisation this album also contained droney percussive pieces
mainly performed on organ, flute and electronic instruments. This
time around however the band sounds more like a collective of
electronic professors than true musicians but the way they bundle
their electronic genius most certainly results in a unique musical
offering. Although we often have to wait long periods of time before
a new album sees the light of day it’s always a pleasure to capture
their unrivaled experience onto disc and enjoy every breathtaking
nanosecond on offer. With ‘Elektro kardiogramm’ they kind of hark
back to the lengthy track ‘Atem’ of their “Kraftwerk 2” album where
they also used the sound of amplified breathing to great effect. In
a way it’s build up here contains a Jean-Michel Jarre flavour. Also
the final track, ‘Tour de France’ as released way back in 1983
contains Schneider’s breathing.
In fact the entire idea for this album
came together in the early eighties when Ralf Hütter and Florian
Schneider became besotted with their bikes the same way as they were
fanatical about music. They started to study cycling catalogues
instead of writing new material. Especially for Ralf the bicycle had
become an alternative for the synthesizer. When they recorded the
song ‘Tour de France’ in 1983 they incorporated the sound of
breathing, bikes switching gears and bike chains to great effect.
They planned a whole album based around their favourite theme but
lost the concept when they got involved in the “Electric café” album
instead. This album contains the track ‘Titanium’, important because
their bikes are made of titanium ! So when the famous Tour de France
celebrated it’s 100th birthday Kraftwerk thought it would
be a good idea to delve into their ideas and work towards a whole
album based around the cycling experience and the Tour de France. In
2003 they were granted to follow the race from the luxury of a
limousine. Pitty they didn’t include a homage to the great Eddy
Merckx. Now that would have been a hit ! At the rate they release
albums I think they’re already planning a concept album based on the
Olympic games in … 2020. Pitty they don’t know which city will
organize it … yet ! |
