Favourite (official) Kraftwerk Studio Album

Fave Official Kraftwerk album...?


  • Total voters
    95
maybe not their best album by any stretch ...in fact prob very flawed, but I have a soft spot for radio-activity...maybe cos it was my first...love the antiquated sound...mellotron/moog/vocoder, etc...can't imagine how it could ever have sounded futuristic. i like all the short sketchy tracks too. messy, romantic...before they got too funktional and self-conscious.

but, y'know, i like all kraftwerk albums to some degree. Ralf and Florian is another particular fave. so what's yours...?
 
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swears

preppy-kei
Computer World. I can listen to this over and over, no problem. Artsy concept album and really satisfying pop record rolled into one. Has a nice New Wave-ish feel to it, the Pocket Calculator vocal sort of reminds me of the B-52s! Also, I would guess it's their most sampled release and the one album by anybody with biggest influence on techno and electro.
 

bunnnnnn

Well-known member
radioactivity is such a beautiful album! the combination of naively-plinky plonk romantische melodies and still-a-bit-garden-shed electronics gets me every time. prob my favourite kraftwerk album (at least in as much as they all are!)

i might've put computer world first as it was the first kraftwerk album i heard (borrowed from the local library at a tender age) but amazing though it is, i reckon there's just more of a sense of intangible mystery to radioactivity, more different threads in there to be unravelled (the almost steampunk drummachine chugging through the bavarian forest melodies of ohm sweet ohm, the deathrattle vocoder on uranium, etc...)

but yeah, like gutterbreakz suggests, the inherent strangeness of kraftwerk's intermeshing of utopian futurism and german romantic traditionalism is really apparent on radioactivity (and on ralf & florian and autobahn) because the whole man-machine interface was probably still a bit shabby round the edges at that point.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
i love the first 2 albums. they are flawed, surely, but imagine if the band went down a road closer to some of the directions on those records.

but i do love the electro-pop. the subtle and coy love songs conveying indescribably bleak alienation (computer love, show room dummies). the ominous proto-industrial which both celebrates and laments an emerging techno-world (auto-bahn, radioaktivity). the bold taking of motorized repetition practiced by many of their peers in rock form to the logical next step - a seemingly obvious but deeply problematic and not-at-all-what-it-seems removal of the human touch.

can't decide so chose the latest one - i tend to play it more today than the others.
 
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and what i wrote didn't do anything for you? :(

it was very stimulating. apologies for not giving you some individual attention.

but only 10 votes from over 100 views? i thought this was one poll where everyone could join in. or am i over-estimating kraftwerk's stature here...?
 

martin

----
Gone for TEE cos it reminds me of a 4 hour train journey from Livorno to Genova in a smoking cab with a group of heavily chain-smoking nuns and a supermodel type. Probably a really gauche choice but there you go.
 

dangercart

New member
computer world's probably my favourite album fullstop, it's the album that made me passionate about music really. i remember listening to it about three times a day, all the way through, for literally three months! years later, i still get all goosepimpley just by thinking about it and it's the only album i can say that for.

a track like numbers is more than timeless, it's like some perpetually futuristic time artefact. reading this post back, it sounds incredibly fanboyish but sod it, i truly love computer world, it's fucking amazing. fuck, the part where computer world 2 comes in after numbers is just incredible
 
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bnek

Well-known member
much as i love trans-europe & radioaktivity i end up listening to computer world most often so that wins. that stabby delayed sequence that detunes a little at 1:50 & the drifting pads on 'its more fun to compute' is genius. 'perpetually futuristic' is about right, and its pretty funky too.
 

Client Eastwood

Well-known member
Hard for me to decide between T.E.E. and Computer World.

I love the T.E.E. -> Metal to Metal -> Franz Schubert, sparkling section of music.

But Computer World has The Computer World part 2 -> Computer Love with theme of lonely people staying at home in front of thier computers, ie thier internets.

I'll go with T.E.E. cos right now im thinking 'za za zaza zaza, za za za'
 

ML2008

New member
Voted for The Man Machine.

I never grow tired of the beauty of a track like Neon Lights - the way it sound like they are improvising and expanding the melody line towards the end of the track. And the techno-pop of The Model and the groove of The Robots. What happened to the remasters mentioned a few years ago?
 

mms

sometimes
Voted for The Man Machine.

I never grow tired of the beauty of a track like Neon Lights - the way it sound like they are improvising and expanding the melody line towards the end of the track. And the techno-pop of The Model and the groove of The Robots. What happened to the remasters mentioned a few years ago?

neon lights is good but you've got to have it on the neon vinyl 12" :)

it's got to be computer world overall for me,
the first thing i had by them was tour de france, then a cassette of trans europe which is still amazing, brilliant cover too.

kraftwerk 1 and two are great too.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Computer World is definitely the one. Tour de France soundtracks was a great return to form though, much better than it had any right to be. I'd love to hear that live boxset thing that came out a couple of years back, its meant to be really good isn't it?
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
It just has to be Computer World, perfection even though two of the songs are basically the same as two others and it's a short album anyway. Has to be on record too as Computer Liebe is one of the great Side 2 openings. For the ultimate version I would replace Pocket Calculator with Dentaku.

Love the live sequencer programming and detuning arps on this (Heimcomputer live).


Actually as an album statement TEE is probably better and I have to give ultimate props for the sheer sonic inventiveness and no compromise of 1 but in the end CW just gets more spins.
 
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