Kraftwerk

Kraftwerk are one of the most important bands of all time in terms of their influence on the use of electronic percussion, sequencers and synthesizers in music.  From 1974 through 1986, they released six great albums.   In 1991, they released an album called The Mix, which on first glance seemed to be a sort of greatest hits collection, though in reality, it was complete remakes of several of their most popular tracks using the then latest digital technology instead of the original analog equipment that was used to make the original versions.  Not surprisingly, The Mix versions are not really an improvement on the original versions, but they are an interesting new approach.  While they lack the warmth of the original recordings, they shine on their own with a unique shiny, almost plastic, sound.  Then in 2003, the band released their final (to date) album based on updated versions of their early 80's single Tour De France, which had never yet been included on an album.  All eight of these albums were collected in a beautifully designed box set released in 2009 called The Catalogue.

I received this box set for Christmas in 2009 and still have it, and the artwork is really great, including 12" sized books for each of the eight albums in the collection.  There is only one problem with this set - the actual sound of the cd's is fairly bad compared to earlier cd releases of these albums, except for the 2003 album which sounds about the same as the original cd release.  Not realizing this at the time, I sold my older cd's of The Mix and Electric Cafe, assuming there was no reason to keep duplicates.  This was, of course, a mistake, as the versions I sold had far superior sound to the versions included in the box.  I have recently been trying to collect better versions of these albums on cd.  I was lucky to find a mid 1990's cd of their fourth album The Man Machine recently at a cd store, and was amazed at how much better it sounded than the 2009 remastered version.  This led me to investigate further, and I found copies of Electric Cafe and The Mix at the local library in their original cd release versions (both of which are still in print surprisingly) and confirmed that they also sound better than the versions in the box.  The album Electric Cafe has also been renamed in the 2009 box to its originally intended title of Techno Pop.   Also, the track listing was altered to include the shorter single version of The Telephone Call, along with one of the single's b-sides House Phone (which is just an instrumental different mix of the a-side), instead of the original longer album version of The Telephone Call.  I would like to find both of these cd's to buy (they are easy to find new still, but a good deal on some used copies would be even better), but for now I am able to just listen to the ones I got from the library.

I also recently ordered a 1990's reissue cd version of their 1981 album Computerworld, except that it is a German version, titled Computerwelt.  Most of the song titles and lyrics are in German rather than English (Taschenrechner instead of Pocket Calculator, and Computer Liebe instead of Computer Love, for example), though It's More Fun To Compute still has its title and lyrics in English.  It sounds very good, similar to how I remember the vinyl lp of this album that Kevin had when we were younger sounding.  I remember being able to just get completely absorbed in the sound of Computer Love, and the 2009 cd was never able to re-create that same feeling.  This new earlier German cd version does have that same magical sound you can get completely lost in,  and it is amazing.

I've ordered an earlier cd copy of Trans Europe Express, but I haven't yet received it.  I don't know if I've ever heard a a good sounding version of this album, so I am very excited to hear it when it arrives.  I may also decide to seek out earlier cd versions of Autobahn and Radioactivity, though I am more patient about those two albums as I don't enjoy them quite as much as the band's later albums.