On The Road Again: Kraftwerk "Kraftwerk (1994 Reissue, Germany, Germanofon, 941001)"

sábado, 5 de abril de 2025

Kraftwerk "Kraftwerk (1994 Reissue, Germany, Germanofon, 941001)"

Kraftwerk is the debut studio album by German electronic band Kraftwerk. It was released in Germany in 1970, and produced by Konrad "Conny" Plank.

After the commercial failure of Tone Float (1970), Organisation were dropped by RCA Records while Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider signed a new deal with Philips and named their new project Kraftwerk. To begin work, the duo rented an empty workshop in an industrial era near a railway station in Düsseldorf, which would eventually become Kling Klang Studio.

The album was recorded from July to September 1970 and was produced by colleague Conny Plank, who shared the credit with Hütter and Schneider. They were also joined by two drummers during the recording of the album: Andreas Hohmann and Klaus Dinger. Hohmann played on "Ruckzuck" and "Stratovarius", while Dinger played on "Vom Himmel Hoch". The other instrumentation features Hütter on bass, as well as both Hammond and Tubon electric organs, the latter made by Swedish factory Joh Mustad AB in 1966, while Schneider plays the flute.

Ned Raggett, writing for AllMusic, called Kraftwerk "an exploratory art rock album with psych roots" and "sudden jump cuts of musique concrète noise and circular jamming as prone to sprawl as it is to tight focus". Adam Blyweiss described it as "credible jazz, rock noise and funk jiggle".

The song "Ruckzuck" is driven by a motorik groove and powerful multi-dubbed flute riff. Hütter plays a piano line on a modified Hammond organ, and many instruments on the album were manipulated by a pitch-to-voltage converter, which converts sound into voltage that powers a synthesizer. NME characterized "Ruckzuck" as "skirting around the edges of free jazz".

Jason Anderson of Uncut noted that "Stratovarius" features no synthesizers and begins as an "ominous cloud of electronic noise" that evolves into an "acid rock jam", similarly powered by the motorik groove. "Megaherz" is a more subdued track, bringing "traces of ambient music", and the only one on the album to feature no drums. Anderson describes "Vom Himmel Hoch" as a "doomy soundscape" that serves as an "aural simulation of a bombing raid", ending in an apocalyptic explosion. The track has slight pitch curves that emulate the Doppler effect.

Kraftwerk was released in November 1970. The album cover features a drawing of a fluorescent-coloured traffic cone, inspired by the works of Andy Warhol and the pop art movement.

In early 1971, Hütter left the group to study architecture in Aachen, leaving Schneider, drummer Dinger and newcomer guitarist Michael Rother. The three-member Kraftwerk lineup of Schneider, Dinger and Rother made an appearance on Radio Bremen, and also on the TV shows Beat-Club and Okidoki. After this, Dinger and Rother left to form the band Neu!, with Hütter rejoining Schneider to continue Kraftwerk and both parties recording under the mentoring of Conny Plank.

No material from this album has been performed in the band's live set since the Autobahn tour of 1975. In later interviews, Schneider referred to the first three Kraftwerk albums as "archaeology", and while they have never been reissued, unauthorized releases have been widely available. In 2007, Kraftwerk hinted that the album might finally see a remastered CD release after the Der Katalog boxed set. Vinyl releases of the first two albums were scheduled for Record Store Day 2020 but were ultimately cancelled.

"Ruckzuck" was used as the theme song for the PBS show Newton's Apple in the United States. However, its use was unauthorized and the program later substituted a cover version of the song.

Track listing

All tracks are written by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider-Esleben.