Seminal, mesmerising and groundbreaking. The first album from Kraftwerk that set the scene for everything to follow. An absolute classic of our age and THE influence for countless music genres and artists.

Genius.

Prior to 1974 Kraftwerk were part of a German movement known, derisively in the English press, as ‘Krautrock’. This movement was probably closer related to Prog Rock than any other genre, with psychedelic influences. It was an attempt by German musicians to create their own musical identity rather than just singing cover versions in German accents. Indeed, Kraftwerk took their name, meaning Power Plant, because it was Germanic rather than the English names other German bands were using. Founder members Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider had formed an earlier band called ‘The Organisation’.

From 1970 to 1974 Kraftwerk released 3 albums that laid down some of the groundwork that would make them the band we know and love today. Steady beats, simple tunes and heavily considered affects.

Kraftwerk themselves consider the first three albums as ‘archaeology’ and the first album they consider as a part of the true Kraftwerk canon is 1974’s ‘Autobahn’.

Using the technology the band had embraced in earlier albums, including their home made drum pads ‘Autobahn’ was far more advanced than their previous releases and made them a popular feature for the media. They even appeared on the BBC’s ‘Tomorrows World’ as their techniques and ideas were far in advance of any other band, and it wouldn’t be their only appearance on the show.

Even with the guitar and flute pieces further in to the first track this was a huge step for electronic music. At the time keyboards were the preserve of one-hit wonders like Hot Butter or Prog Rock dinosaur bands but this one track propelled Kraftwerk and electronic music in to the popular music scene and would eventually influence bands for the next 40 years. By the late 1970’s electronic dance music was replacing disco and could regularly be heard in pop songs. An edited version of the title track was released as a single and became a hit on both sides of the Atlantic. This showed the world that both German bands and electronic music should be taken seriously.

The first track on the album, ‘Autobahn’ is almost 23 minutes long and took up the whole of the first side of the vinyl release. The band takes us on an electronic journey on the German autobahn network. We can hear the strips in the road surface as we pass over them, as well as cars speeding past us in both directions. Despite the songs length the track seems to fly by quite quickly. It speeds up at the end and becomes what is a decent dance track. The track also, of course, gave us the classic lyric “Wir fahr’n fahr’n fahr’n auf der Autobahn” which has been remembered down the years by people that have only ever heard of ‘Autobahn’ and ‘The Model’.

‘Kometenmelodie 1’ is a simple but atmospheric song. It leads straight in to ‘Kometenmelodie 2’, which is a more up-tempo version of its predecessor. Though the influence of earlier recordings can be heard in them they are part of the huge step toward what was to follow and a clear attempt by the band to create music that people could dance to.

The shorter ‘Mitternacht’ is a haunting track. It wouldn’t sound out of place in a dark horror film and always makes me wonder if it was just Kraftwerk showing off what they could achieve with the technology available to them. I’m not convinced it can be referred to as a ‘song’ though.

‘Morgenspaziergang’ (Morning Walk) is a collection of sound affects, like electronic bird song and a synthetic river, with a flute and piano repeated over it before the affects fade out. Though it is very artistic it is a nod towards their previous work, and very much a krautrock/prog rock track. If you weren’t told it was by Kraftwerk you wouldn’t recognise it as one of their tracks today. After all they were still finding their way toward the sound they would perfect and that would make them the influential band they are now.

Ralf Hutter allegedly once claimed that as classically trained musicians everything they produced would be a classic. In the case of ‘Autobahn’ this could be said to be very true. It remains a milestone in popular music and set the bar very high for what was to follow.

James Nason

January 2014

I am not a journalist or music critic and the opinions expressed in this report are my own. I am just a very biased Kraftwerk fan!