Computer World - Kraftwerk

This was the album that pretty much inspired Detroit techno. The minimalist rhythms and tones of tracks like "Numbers", "Home Computer" and "It's More Fun To Compute" provided an electro template to the house/techno explosion to come out of the American midwest in the mid eighties. The LP still inspires with dreary English group Coldplay recently using the melody from "Computer Love" as the basis for their own song Talk. This album was described as being "...so stiff it's funky." Depending on what you look for in music this is a good or a bad thing. There's a couple of conventional songs, i.e ones ...

Fizz whirr beep ... The sounds of metal, man and machine in a sublime half baked dance stance in which you can immerse yourself BUT TOTALLY. The twin high points commercially of Autobahn and The Model probably say it all about the German pioneers of electronic rock - the first their peak realisation of breathy mood music with sparse vocals and flaring electronica, the second a bland electro pop by numbers. In between those points Kraftwerk were all things to all people - the epitome of ultra cool Germanic hipness, and a fine and dandy academic bunch of hit makers, deliciously danceable, but ultimately unfeeling and cold. But oh could they cook ...

Kraftwerk is one of these bands that although hugely influential - how many bands ( from Africa Bambataa to Ultravox to Depeche Mode ) and musical movements of the 80s, 90s and even 00s owe their existence to the complicated rhthyms and arrangements here and the other albums - never made it huge. Although it is probable that the band and especially its core Florian Schneider, Ralf Hutter were glad of that fact. Computer World is an exultation of the new computer technology in all its forms from the opening track to the closing. Although a measly 34 minutes long, Kraftwerk have never been ones to push quantity at the public and again followed the trend ...