album boxset // 12345678 The Catalogue
When I started Documentary Evidence
in 2003, fairly early on I had an intense urge to write about Kraftwerk,
however I'd always wanted to be extremely purist about the site:
I would write about Mute artists and those attached
to the label only. No matter how hard I tried, I could never quite
forge a connection. Kraftwerk were clearly an influence on early
Mute acts, and probably most of the NovaMute roster,
but direct connections to the band were non-existent. The closest
I could get was Konrad 'Conny' Plank, who worked
with the band on Autobahn, and who had worked with Can
and and at whose seminal studio DAF's debut (Die
Kleinen Und Die Bosen) was crafted, but it was a pretty tenuous
link upon which to structure a set of reviews. A few years later
I started my Audio Journal blog and planned a huge retrospective
of Kraftwerk but my CDs were spread across various boxes in my loft
and it all felt a bit too much effort.
So the arrival of 12345678 The Catalogue,
an 8CD boxset of all Kraftwerk's purely electronic albums (i.e.
it misses out Kraftwerk, Kraftwerk 2 and Ralf
Und Florian) on Mute, provided a perfect opportunity to write
about the band for Documentary Evidence. Daniel Miller,
in an interview with Record Collector a few years ago,
gushed of his love for Kraftwerk and said that if there was one
band he wished he could have signed, it would have been them. With
Kraftwerk's electronic catalogue licensed to Capitol / EMI, and
with Mute at the time part of the EMI empire, it presumably didn't
take much for Miller to persuade the top brass that putting out
remastered editions of the eight albums collected here under the
Mute banner made eminent sense.
12345678 The Catalogue collects together
newly repackaged remastered editions of the albums from 1974's Autobahn
through to 2003's Tour De France Soundtracks, all of which
are also available as standalone CDs. A vinyl boxset and individual
vinyl editions were also available. The CD boxset is LP-sized, in
pristine white cardboard with a blocky, pixellated 8-bit representation
of the band on the front. Inside, there are eight individual slipcase
editions of the remastered CDs, each with newly-designed minimal
sleeve images that are nevertheless directly linked to the original
sleeves and the album titles. Finally, the box contains eight LP-sized
booklets containing additional imagery, technical details on each
album, and the original artwork.
As much as I love Kraftwerk, I've never especially
loved Autobahn. I much preferred the quartet of albums
that followed - Radio-Activity, Trans-Europe Express,
The Man Machine and Computer World. The only bits
of Autobahn I really like are the pieces like 'Mitternacht',
which has a dangerous quality to it, or the serene 'Kometenmelodie
1'; I find myself desperate for 'Autobahn' itself to be over, which
is why I much prefer the shortened single version I have on 7".
The albums that followed were, to me, much more
inventive. They showed Kraftwerk finally slewing off the flutes
and organic instruments from their first three releases, some of
which still crept into Autobahn's songs. It's possibly
a personal thing - I much prefer the sounds of the synths used on
those latter LPs, mainly I guess because they sound less Proggy
than on Autobahn, closer in genesis to the synth noises
I first heard as a small boy in 1981's synthpop Year Zero.
Listened to in sequence, the leap to Radio-Activity
from Autobahn still feels massive and that LP still sounds
fresh and refreshingly experimental today. The rhythms which seemed
tentative on Autobahn sound much more carefully wrought
on Radio-Activity; that rhythmic element would become much
more pronounced by Trans-Europe Express, leading to the
likes of the quirky, angular 'Showroom Dummies' and later on into
the pure electropop of 'The Model' from The Man Machine.
Computer World was cleaner, more refined
still, still fetishising now everyday technology such as the calculator
and heading into a digital soundworld after the analogue Seventies.
Techno Pop, the oft-overlooked album originally titled
Electric Café (here with a slightly amended track
listing) found the group experimenting with sampling technology,
with somewhat mixed results. Electric Café / Techno
Pop would prove to be the band's last album proper for over
twenty years, with only The Mix - a compilation of updated
and re-recorded Kraftwerk tracks - seeing the light of day, altogether
strange given the prevalence of dance music, and Kraftwerk's clear
influence on that genre, at the time. The length of time between
Electric Café and the considered Tour De France
Soundtracks, is one of the most frustrating aspects of Kraftwerk's
output, but it does add to their overall mystique.
In spite of how beautiful and necessary this boxset
is, like most things Kraftwerk it comes with a tinge of disappointment.
Yes, the albums are lovingly remastered; yes, they sound better
than ever; but where are the usual traits of expensive boxsets?
The exclusive, never-before-heard tracks? The demos of tracks and
earlier versions? Live concerts? DVDs containing footage of the
band on stage and working in the studio?
Perhaps it is better this way; perhaps not. I think
there will always be a part of any Kraftwerk fan that wishes they
had been a little more prolific with their outputs, but at the same
time the economy of Kling-Klang Produkt since Computer Love
has prevented the duo from losing relevance, keeps their achievements
as pioneering and stops continual references between new material
and their influential work. 12345678 The Catalogue presents
the 68 tracks that Kraftwerk put on albums between 1974 and 2003
in as reverential a fashion as is possible with this presently-elusive
band.
Note: a black, limited numbered
edition of 2000 was released in April 2012 to coincide with Kraftwerk's
Retrospective 12345678 at New York's Museum Of Modern Art.
cd1 - Autobahn:
1. Autobahn
2. Kometenmelodie 1
3. Kometenmelodie 2
4. Mitternacht
5. Morgenspaziergang
cd2 - Radio-Activity:
1. Geiger Counter
2. Radioactivity
3. Radioland
4. Airwaves
5. Intermission
6. News
7. The Voice Of Energy
8. Antenna
9. Radio Stars
10. Uranium
11. Transistor
12. Ohm Sweet Ohm
cd3 - Trans-Europe Express:
1. Europe Endless
2. The Hall Of Mirrors
3. Showroom Dummies
4. Trans Europe Express
5. Metal On Metal
6. Abzug
7. Franz Schubert
8. Endless Endless
cd4 - The Man Machine:
1. The Robots
2. Spacelab
3. Metropolis
4. The Model
5. Neon Lights
6. The Man Machine
cd5 - Computer World:
1. Computer World
2. Pocket Calculator
3. Numbers
4. Computer World 2
5. Computer Love
6. Home Computer
7. It's More Fun To Compute
cd6 - Techno Pop:
1. Boing Boom Tschak
2. Techno Pop
3. Musique Non Stop
4. The Telephone Call
5. House Phone
6. Sex Object
7. Electric Café
cd7 - The Mix:
1. The Robots
2. Computer Love
3. Pocket Calculator
4. Dentaku
5. Autobahn
6. Radioactivity
7. Trans-Europe Express
8. Abzug
9. Metal On Metal
10. Home Computer
11. Music Non Stop
Tour de France:
1. Prologue
2. Tour De France (Etape 1)
3. Tour De France (Etape 2)
4. Tour De France (Etape 3)
5. Chrono
6. Vitamin
7. Aero Dynamik
8. Titanium
9. Elektro Kardiogramm
10. La Forme
11. Regeneration
12. Tour De France
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