WARNER MUSIC Kraftwerk - Radio-Activity

1976 ( remaster 2009 )

Voice, Synthesizer, Keyboards, Drum Programming, Electronics – Ralf Hütter

Voice, Vocoder, Vocoder, Synthesizer, Electronics – Florian Schneider
Electronic Drums – Karl Bartos, Wolfgang Flür

[ drowned in sound ] Radio-Activity, originally released in both German (as Radio-Aktivität) and English-language versions in 1975 and 1976 respectively, took a step backwards from the incipient poppiness of Autobahn. Despite this partial retreat into avant-garde electronics, however, in the magisterial title track and ‘Antenna’ it contains two prototypes of the catchy minimalist entities – idea-songs boiled down to their barest essences – that would, from their next album on, come to characterise the classic Kraftwerk sound.

Whereas Autobahn is really one genius concept track accompanied by some diverting sketches, Radio-Activity comes closer to the sonic and intellectual cohesiveness of Kraftwerk’s subsequent releases in the Seventies and early Eighties. While Autobahn had been the first album the band produced after having invested in a Minimoog, it was also the last that featured co-production by Conny Plank. Despite sounding more like a Warrington housewife than a legendary sound engineer and producer from Cologne, Plank had a significant impact on making Kraftwerk the sonic visionaries they became. He also went on to produce Ultravox's 'Vienna', but we all occasionally do shameful things in life.

[ Sputnik ] Radio-Activity is somewhat of a forgotten classic when it comes to Kraftwerk fans. Understandably though, the band released another three albums (Autobahn was before this) after it, all of which continually broke the exceptionally high standards and conventions the band had set themselves. In many ways, it is the middle child. Good, but not outstanding, and certainly not bad enough to get any negative attention. It has simply sat on the shelf, being played occasionally for the title track and moderately successful single Radio-Activity, a groundbreaking release, not simply for it's first usage by Kraftwerk of English vocals in any of their songs, but one notable for a ghostly power plant choir, whom New Order took notice of, and liberally sampled in their smash hit Blue Monday.

The album though, may just as well have started off as an elaborately bad in-joke. The band were, and still are known for their deadpan and often extremely word-play based sense of humour, this album is no exception. The title track denotes popularity on the radio, but also the radioactive processes of decay, half life and fission. There are more hilariously silly puns too, in the form of closer, Ohm Sweet Ohm, the tender, extended number which features the first sound that became known as Kraftwerk, robotic vocals, swirling keyboards, and gorgeously pattering drumbeats.

Throughout the release, Kraftwerk speaks at length of transmission, irradiation, power plants and nuclear physics, and as was in later releases, so is now, the band have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to splitting the atom or how vibrations generate wave lengths in the air, but they have such a futuristic sound that it becomes irrelevant, in fact, if anything, they do an extremely convincing job of lying to us about their knowledge of such subject matters. In Antenna, the band offers up their simple solution of transmission, 'I'm the antenna, catching vibration, you're the transmitter, give information'. It's simple, beautiful and often magically sung lyrics like these that lend the album an almost childlike naivety and sense of wonder for the future - one that ultimately stayed with the band throughout their career.