Kraftwerk.
An outfit I first noticed in the boxes upon boxes of records outside Reddington’s Rare Records then of Moor Street Birmingham, just over the road from the railway station. This would have been 1980 or 1981 and i would have been about 10 years of age maybe a year older.
Reddington’s Rare Records was a bad shop to be honest, a kind of CEX of music but in ways worse, they would buy records from people at very low prices and usually sell them for much higher prices, not sure why I’m pointing this out, I’m just feeling my way back.
Anyway, before the Internet or any exposure in the press for me to Kraftwerk, etc, this shop, amongst many other record shops was in ways the way I found out about music. I usually could not afford to buy so just looked, read the sleeves, picked up on the clues. In such ways I noticed Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, The Beatles and… Kraftwerk.
The visual signals with Kraftwerk were strong, remember, at this point I had never heard them. The difference with Kraftwerk to such bands as the other examples I have just namecheckled was you would see: Autobahn, Radio Activity, Trans-Europe Express, The Man Machine and at later dates Computer World in the cheaper boxes relegated to being outside Reddington’s Rare Records. They would be beaten up albums, but they were affordable, yet I still didn’t buy them but the very real intrigue was there.
In 1981 I was listening to the Top 40 on Radio 1 on a Sunday evening. Computer Love, the single was something like Number 38 and on a whim I taped it and just loved it immediately. It’s no secret that someone somewhere flipped the record and started playing the B-Side, The Model and this simple flip of a 7 inch record saw the single rise quickly to Number 1 in the Charts. In ways I still prefer that discovery moment of Computer Love to The Model - but there’s no denying The Model is a classic single. Somehow not long after I heard Pocket Calculator, but I cannot recall how.
Kraftwerk or rather their label then re-released Showroom Dummies which charted respectably in the singles Chart and this is still my favourite Kraftwerk track. For what is after all a 70’s track to sound that cold, simple, threatening, removed from a norm of Rock Music yet these edges to it appeal in exactly the same ways as an alternative Rock record, more so maybe. Unique.
So then the real time release (for me) of Tour De France in 1983 which I think was their next single only went and raised that bar higher. Mere months after I’d heard Blue Monday and this oozing, throbbing, breathing masterpiece of Electronica. For a record to give the feeling you are drained on a bicycle, to feel the sun on you through the vibe of the sprinkling electronica in its moments that simply pass you by in cruise mode, it fitted 1983 and the real shifts in music that were happening then just perfectly. Yet this was just Kraftwerk being Kraftwerk.
Of the four albums I’ve name checked above you can comfortably add Computer World and Electric Cafe as being essential. That blend of ice cold, like they actually are robots and real connection to emotion through instrumental methods which at time of release were unconventional and still to this very day sound futuristic.
It can only be a 5.
