PROGRESSIVE ELECTRONIC

It is of course not the first time that Edgar Froese has integrated vocals on a TD album, but he never did to such an extent. And after over an hour of this treat, I have to say that the mellow, uniform and inexpressive tone from Chris Hausl is quite working on my nerves.

I'm afraid that my perception of this album won't match the majority of (very few) my fellow reviewers. IMO this album is all flatness and (mainly) boredom. Some fine guitar during "A Dream Of Death". Big deal!

Out of almost fifty reviews from the band, I consider this album as one of the weakest TD work so far. Dull, pitiful and totally lacking of originality. Some deep "Talk Talk" feeling is even available; the most noticeable of these "moments" is probably "Hear The Voice". A typical and great "press next" track. Just as the painful "Lake Of Pontchartrain". One of the worst for sure. But is "Mad Song" any better??? I doubt.

It really hurts me when I have to review a TD album which doesn't fulfil its role. Without any spirit nor flavour: so is "Madcap's Flaming Duty". Fortunately, it didn't happen so often. This sounds as no TD at all. I can only recommend to avoid such an album. Unless you would like to listen to some sub "Human League" compositions ("One Hour Of Madness") or some sub "Spandau Ballet" ballad ("Man").

I guess that you have the global feel?

You can easily miss this release. I will be extremely generous because of the emotional link I have with the band: two stars. But gosh! These vocals sitting at each corner!!!

Well, simply by continuing to do what they had always been doing: stay true to their principles and look further ahead. With Computer World and Computer Love they delivered strong synth-pop songs like they had on the preceding albums. (By the way, didn't Coldplay nick the theme from Computer World for one of their own hits?)

But with songs like Numbers, Home Computer and It's More Fun To Compute they delivered a new outline for later generations. Numbers is pure industrial in my ears, be it done in the usual gentle Kraftwerk way. The main thing Ministry and Nine Inch Nails had to add was to make it louder.

The two closing tracks list among my favourite Kraftwerk tunes and they announce techno in a big way. Front 242, Underworld, Orbital and many generations after them would emphasise the entrancing beats, grooves and the typical synth sequences/bleeps that appear here.

As Umur already pointed out, the sound is generally too soft and muffled here. I had hoped the 2009 remaster would solve this but it didn't. Luckily my favourite tracks also appear on Minimum Maximum in an enhanced format. Anyway, boost the bass and treble and you have another masterpiece. Even at a length of 35 minutes I'm tempted to the maximum rate again.

My main issue with the album is that it doesn't have the quality of their earlier work, nor the power and vigour of their followers. Boing Boom Tschak and Techno Pop have beats that come straight out of earlier Coil or Front 242 albums, while other tracks like Telephone Call and Sex Object come off as poor attempts to sound like Depeche Mode or New Order. All those bands had long since overcome their initial Kraftwork influences and had moved on beyond what Kraftwerk delivers here. A bit painful.

It's an album that is still good enough not to be ashamed off, but it was high time to call it quits and leave the rapidly evolving scene that they started to the new talent.

An obvious change is a stronger emphasis on the beat. As I've pointed out before, some of the original recordings just screamed for a bit more oomph in that department and here they fixed that. Not that it comes close to a 'car-tuning-beats' treatment. They strived for a good balance between the original mood and feel of the songs and a slightly updated sound. Especially Autobahn and Radioactivity are improved by it and surpass their originals with ease.

Other treatments such as Homecomputer tend to overindulge and make the tracks too long. Overall a good addition for the fans.

This isn't the best TD album by any means, but it is certainly a darn good one. I could really give this either 3 or 4 stars, but for most TD fans, this is one of the few 90s albums that definitely belongs in your collection, so I will rank it 4 stars.

I can´t say that it was the mindblowing experience that I was hoping and cheering for, but more in the realm of: Are you [%*!#]ing kidding me?? Where is the drummer? Where is the guitar? And why does this album sound like the perfect romance music for people in coma trying to get it on? Is it dance music for humpback whales? OR am I listening to this in the right manner?

The music is so minimalistic that you are struggling to see the minuscule changes that actually DO happen. The trick is not to listen. Yep, that´s what I said! I had it in my cd-changer for a while, and sometimes it would be playing when I wasn´t aware of it. It eventually struck me as a good record, whilst listening to this after a 10 hour long workday as a sub in the local kinder garden, where I strut my stuff from time to time. I was tired like Santa turning 350 - put the album on, and suddenly I got it! It was music of giant immoveable mountains and planets spinning on their own axes to the slow droning of TD. The music moves extremely slow - like a caterpillar with untied shoelaces, but when you finally calm yourself down to the point of 4 heartbeats a minute, the droning of the caterpillar suddenly transforms into this galactic butterfly, and you are left with an absurd mental image of Time.

The problem with this album then is its inaccessibility. It´s a masterpiece in its own right, but I am so seldom in the mood for it, that it looses the attraction. It truly is a mental voyage to listen to this album, but more so a never ending hunt for the right mindset, which is a shame.

Another issue I first had was the lack of melody. I was raised on symphonic prog so this sparse minimalism was a bit too much (or too less?) to take back then. I can appreciate it a lot more now but compared to the following albums, this still remains not much more then a transitory album between their early kraut (Morgenspazierung, Mitternacht) and the techno direction they would take later one.

The first 5 minutes of Autobahn and the Kometenmelodie2 are the only tracks that reveal where Kraftwerk was heading for. For me the album is a historical document but not much more then that.

The title track is the best track here. After a short salute to Pink Floyd's Astronomy Domine, Kraftwerk veers off into completely unexplored territories. Of course there was Tangerine Dream that had also used sequencers in the previous year, but they hardly inserted any melody in to their albumside long synth-drones yet, while Kraftwerk just needed 20 seconds to get to the point: a dead-catchy main theme that they just put on repeat for almost the entire length of the song. You couldn't get less prog then that.

The remainder of the tracks hasn't got much of an effect on me, except for Antenna. Though it must be said that the sequence of Antenna is almost exactly the same as Autobahn. Let's call it a first remix of own material. Well, even that was revolutionary back then.

Kraftwerk has a cold and distant sound, but if you claim there is no emotion in this music then you haven't heard The Hall Of Mirrors or Showroom Dummies. Even silly lyrics included those are bleak and gripping songs with an irresistible mix of subtle playfulness and understated melancholy.

Europe Endless and Trans-Europe Express are the more techno-oriented tracks. The beats are still rather tame but the blue-print for techno is there: sound effects and short catchy melodies on an entrancing beat. That's all it takes. And if the preceding music wasn't ground-breaking enough yet, with Metal on Metal they even dip their feet into a style that would lead to EBM and industrial music in the 80's and 90's.

With a little moog sequence and mellotron, Franz Schubert does a little nod to the kraut sound of previous albums. It's a nice way to end this astonishing album.

I intended to give only their Minimum Maximum 5 stars but while hearing this for the review I find it hard to resist. After all, it's their most revolutionary and accomplished album. By the way, I also like the original album art a lot. Those short and cute haircuts, the distant posture. Yes, the 80's were just around the corner!

However, Kraftwerk themselves seem to have earned some respect among proggers here, which is great to see. Glad not to be alone. Man Machine is Kraftwerk's defining album and the high point of a 5 year evolution starting from Kraut rock morphing into electronic progressive and finally turning to a completely stripped down version of that type of music.

While Tangerine Dream, Schulze and Ashra created intricate compositions with layers of progressing themes, Kraftwerk made the decision to throw all that overboard and just preserve the few best sequences and melodies out of possibly hours of improvisations and experimentations. To compensate for that minimalism they put more emphasis on the rhythmic backbone of the music and - probably the reason why they are so widely respected - they managed to craft catchy and memorable songs from their sparse mechanical ingredients. And great songs are aplenty on this album. In fact, there's not one weaker track here.

I have only one minor quibble with this and the other great Kraftwerk albums. That would be the rather flat and dated drum sounds. Of course, those were due to the technical limitations of the time. Maybe they even inspired Kraftwerk to compensate the problem by an even stronger focus on great songs. Who knows? In the techno scene especially, technical possibilities can be inspiring but more often then not they make the artist lazy and cause formulaic sounding music that misses experimentalism and inventively. And we certainly can't blame Kraftwerk for that.

I reserved my Kraftwerk 5-star for their stunning live album Minimum Maximum that has most of their classic tracks and also resolved most of the sound problems here. Looking at it from a historical perspective this one is of course every bit as entitled to 5 stars.