Kraftwerk - Computerwelt
By Mark Dohmann
| Label: | Kling Klang – 1C 064-46 311, EMI Electrola – 1C 064-46 311 |
|---|---|
| Format: | Vinyl, LP, Album, Stereo |
| Country: | Germany |
| Released: | 1981 |
| Genre: | Electronic, Pop |
| Style: | Electro, Synth Pop |
Press the special key and it plays a little melody
1981 Swanston Street down a dingy arcade near Missing Link Records on Little Flinders St was Pipe Records and the enigmatic Danny “You Like You Buy” (with an accent like a eastern European movie hitman) who specialised in kraut/punk/industrial music/grind/death metal and the darkest of Norwegian “classical” works of the era. His European connections provided Krautrock and electronica from Can, Neu, Klaus Schultz, Harold Grosskopf, Michael Rother, Robert Schroder, Tangerine Dream, Peter Baumann and Kraftwerk including bootlegs recorded on Walkmans and cut to vinyl live concerts. Vangelis, Kitaro, Glass, Jarre, and other aligned branches were there fresh of the boat in Vinyl.
Having spent year living in Germany in 1970-71 there must have been some hardwiring in place to accept the musical expositions of Kraftwerk along with other adventurous souls who created what would become a fairly influential sound. Lookup YouTube on Synth Britannia and you’ll see how far the influences reached including powering Detroit Hip Hop (which helped to save the vinyl LP industry for us all). That others like PM Dawn and Cold Play would continue to sample Kraftwerk in later years (sometimes without acknowledging the samples on liner notes) only helped enshrine these guys as “legendary”.
The first time I heard Kraftwerk “machine music” by the 4 “robots” from Düsseldorf was the Man Machine 1978 with The Model being played on adventurous radio in Melbourne. When ComputerWelt was released I was keen to see what leaps in tech had occurred since 1978. Lame attempts at learning how to drive a Roland SH101 quickly made me realise that leaving composition to the professionals like Kraftwerk was a smarter way to get to musical Nirvana.
When ComputerWelt was released I was super excited to hear it on the home stereo (Pioneer) and part of the pleasure was understanding it in German (as it was intended). Whilst Italian is the language of opera (Yes I know there are Schubert Lieder and Wagner) but German to my ear is a perfect companion to the music of electrons.
Some listeners might complain that Kraftwerk live is like going to listen to a pre-recorded event but avid fans might like to mention the “schtick” is about control and perfection and that joy is in waiting for that moment in live sessions when the synths are freed to allow improvisation during instrumental breaks. To hear this try Computer Love live sessions (compare (1981 vs in 2015) and Neonlicht (Neonlights) (compare in 2010 vs in 1991).
This improvisation “surprise” is why one can pay for 4 nights at the Sydney Vivid Festival to hear two concerts of Kraftwerk performing per night (8 albums in sequence over 4 nights) without getting bored. Each night after the main album they played a medley of the 8 albums as the second half of each concert (for those listeners who only bought one ticket). Each medley contained “new” versions of Neonlights or Computer Love with the nod from Ralf Hutter to his bandmates to “go off the leash”.
This album (and their other albums) hold a special place in my music library. Whilst I can dig Miles Davis to an equal amount and find John Lee Hooker or Neil Young’s genius I can quickly navigate to Krautrock. When a good friend introduced me to Nils Frahm about a year ago, I quickly got it. Recently I met Nils (another true musical genius) after his Melbourne concert and we shared common ground on musical influences. Berlin vs Dusseldorf who cares it’s all good!
Kraftwerk, has influenced electronic music by an excessive amount over the last 30 plus years, and their album Computer World is an excellent place to start the journey down the Krautrock rabbit hole.
Detroit electronic music producer Carl Craig in a 2009 interview said “It was just this kind of relentless groove.”
As Neil Young discovered on his Trans album track Computer Age which has direct DNA with Kraftwerk Computer World album it just proves even old hippies know “It’s More Fun To Compute”! with a TRS-80…