Sunday, April 17, 2016

Kraftwerk - "Radio-Activity" [1975]

Artist: Kraftwerk
Title: Radio-Activity
Genre: Electronic
Country: Germany
Release date: 1975

Track List: 
  1. Geiger Counter
  2. Radioactivity
  3. Radioland
  4. Airwaves
  5. Intermission
  6. News
  7. The Voice of Energy
  8. Antenna
  9. Radio Stars
  10. Uranium
  11. Transistor
  12. Ohm Sweet Ohm
Bonus:
  1. Radioactivity (Single Edit)
  2. Antenna (Single Edit)
  3. Geiger Counter/Radioactivity (Live)
  4. Airwaves (Live)
  5. The Voice of Energy/Radio Stars/Ohm Sweet Ohm
While I'm at it, let's post my favourite album in the whole Kraftwerk discography (and one of my most favourite ones in general). It isn't quite as popular as "Autobahn" or "Die Mensch-Maschine" (which is understandable because it certainly sounds more experimental than these ones), but its influence on electronic music is undisputable.

In Dmitry "DMT" Tolmatsky's Industrial Culture FAQ, Kraftwerk, The Residents and Sand are mentioned as examples of bands which were "playing industrial before the industrial music scene even existed". Of course this album can't be put in the same category with "The Second Annual Report" by Throbbing Gristle which came out a couple of years later, but it does feature a lot of topics and sound techniques that later became commonplace in industrial music. It's a concept album dealing with everything that has to do with radiation, from α/β/γ-rays to harmless radio waves, and it personally touches me not only because I've studied all this stuff a lot during my university years, but also because it reflects the atmosphere of the "nuclear scare" that was prevalent during the Cold War years (and even during my early childhood).

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