Kraftwerk
Radio-Activity [50th Anniversary Edition]
WARNER/PARLOPHONE

Kraftwerk’s legitimately historic career now spans 56 years, and it’s difficult to write about only one aspect—or album—of it without writing about all of it, as the band’s innovations are simply too gigantic, their influence too prevalent on the past, present, and future of Western pop music. This seismic impact may cause us to forget that Kraftwerk didn’t just create the basic vocabulary for modern synthpop (and vital sample fodder for the foundation of hip-hop); again and again, they also made dazzling LPs full of peaks, valleys, shade, nuance, crackerjack, and prizes. And, friends, this is why anniversary reissues like this one are so important, and not merely a strain on our patience and wallet: They demand that we focus on a single record.

The 50th anniversary re-release of Radio-Activity (and yes, it’s about half a year late—the album was originally released in late 1975) reminds us that it’s the first of Kraftwerk’s many front-to-back stellar LPs built around a thematic, pop-based experience for the listener (this could not be said of 1974’s Autobahn, nor the three fascinating albums the band released between 1970 and ’73; although the song “Autobahn” certainly told a story, the full LP did not). Radio-Activity is an astonishing, weirdly poppy picture of the Cold War–fogged world at the two-thirds point of the 20th century. Sugar-plum pop created under the hovering clouds of annihilation, it’s built out of the sounds of number stations, the dot-dash culture of Iron Curtain–coded communication, and the languages of divided Europe. I always suspected that the band’s contemporary claims that Radio-Activity was “just” about radioactivity and “the radio” were ingenuous—the album appears to not so much be about radio as entertainment, but radio as a highway of secrets and espionage.

On multiple levels—invention, concept, and execution—Radio-Activity is 3D chess without being overwrought or confusing; exotic and artistic without being dissonant or arty; and alerting to the ear and mind but as soft and welcoming as a teddy bear. Melodically, the album moves from strength to strength: “Radioland,” “Airwaves,” and “Ohm Sweet Ohm” are drop-dead irresistible, and the latter is Kraftwerk at their most elegiac. Considering this is Kraftwerk’s first album to feature multiple vocal pieces, it’s amazing how fully the band absorbed ultra-melodic storytelling into their schemata, and how they effortlessly integrated this into the seamless flow of the album.

Radio-Activity is also filled with the joy of discovery. After half a decade of finding themselves, as it were, on Radio-Activity, Kraftwerk sound palatably gleeful to have arrived at the formula that would see them through the rest of the century (and beyond), mixing sonic commentary on a subject with simplistic yet inventive mega sing-song technopop (oh, and regarding this package’s “expansive Dolby Atmos mix,” indeed, I can hear an expanded clarity, depth, and spatiality that well suits the hummable history lesson that is Radio-Activity). The collection is superbly realized, Cold War–tension bubblegum nursery music, and a reminder that Kraftwerk aren’t merely one of the great innovators of our time, but one of our great album artists.

FLOOD

The Tenth Anniversay Issue

Dua Saleh, Of Earth & Wires

Kraftwerk, Radio-Activity [50th Anniversary Edition]

Towa Bird, Gentleman

Nimmi Gowrinathan

MUSIC, ART + CULTURE,DELIVERED STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX

MUSIC, ART + CULTURE,
DELIVERED STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX