I listened to Kraftwerk's live album Minimum, Maximum for the first time yesterday. I knew it existed, but oddly I had little or no interest in hearing it, I think because I had a suspicion it would be tedious.
And so it turned out. The tracks were largely carbon copies of the original, or with insignificant variations. It was so artless it could have been a Jean Michel Jarre live album. Sure, the clarity and precision of the sound is marvellous, but what about of a bit of invention, and variety? A guest guitarist, maybe? The only track that's interesting is Aero-dynamik, which was also the only interesting track on Kraftwerk's most recent album, 'Tour de France Soundtracks' (2003).
This is the first time I've listened to Kraftwerk and thought "I could do better than this", which, while a bad outlook for the band, was personally quite liberating. Thanks, Kraftwerk!
Kraftwerk appear to be glaciating towards a box set release in 2007 (or possibly 2008, or 2009, or 2019). This box set comprises the 8 'official' albums (ignoring the first three, which are too shambolic/interesting to include) remastered and probably re-visioned (perhaps removing the drum beat from Autobahn to get back at Wolfgang Flur - haha!). Now that Ralph and Florian are in their 60s, this project sounds suspiciously like a wrapup in preparation for retirement. It's also unnecessary - how is any of this going to make the originals better? What I'd much rather hear is a new album of flute and piano music (with added textures and filters, of course), which I know they can both do. We've had more than enough beats and robots - how about something more organic and ambient?
Posted by stuart at January 28, 2007 9:06 AM