Kraftwerk
were probably the most popular band to emerge from the German krautrock scene of
the 1970s, which spawned other great acts including Can, Neu! and Faust.
Kraftwerk’s sound was somewhat more plastic than that of its peers, due to the
heavy use of synthesizers, vocoders and computer-speech software. They were therefore pivotal in laying the foundations of electronic music, and played an important
role in the development of other music genres ranging from new wave to hip-hop.
The Man-Machine is my favorite
Kraftwerk record, and it neatly encapsulates their mechanistic approach to
music. “The Robots” opens the proceedings with a praise to the machines, where
the lyrics “Я твой слуга / Я твой работник” (“I’m your servant / I’m your
worker”) help to give a Soviet tinge to the song. “Spacelab” and “Metropolis”
are mostly instrumental tracks, where the song titles are repeated in what
amounts to a haunting mantra. In “The Model” and “Neon Lights”, Ralf Hütter briefly
abandons his vocoder and thereby renders the songs more human and appealing.
“The Man-Machine” concludes the record as it started, that is, with a laudatory
stance for all things mechanic. Have a listen to “The Model”, perhaps the
closest that Kraftwerk ever got to playing a conventional pop tune:
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