WARNER MUSIC Kraftwerk - The Man Machine

1978 ( 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 ]Viewed with the generous and neatening benefits of hindsight, while Kraftwerk’s sixth album, Trans-Europe Express, mapped out the blueprint for electro and techno, their seventh, The Man-Machine, secured what Simon Reynolds has called the group’s ‘ancestral centrality’ for synthpop. As such, the only bad thing that could be said about it is that it was indirecly responsible for the release of thousands of tonnes of New Romantic haircut-enabling chlorofluorocarbons into the atmosphere.

Malignant environmental impacts aside, The Man-Machine is a ruthlessly precision-tooled piece of work. Its pointillist attention to detail is the reason why it sounds every bit as impactful now in remastered form as it must have done in 1978. It’s easy to forget that the laptop I’m writing this on today could outstrip the then-awesome power of band’s Kling Klang studio (the 'Mütterschiff', or ‘mothership’, as Ralf Hütter once described it). But prior to the advent of MIDI in 1982, the methods of syncing synthesisers to computers, drum machines and sequencers were primitive, and to make electronic music as tight and sharp as that contained within the blood-red and ebony black sleeve of The Man-Machine was a monumental achievement in its own right, even before you factor in the presence of some of the most sublime pop melodies of the decade. As Ian Craig Marsh said of The Human League’s first album, 1979’s Reproduction , “it sounded weak next to Moroder and Kraftwerk. We wanted our records to be more brutal on the rhythmic level, but at that point the engineers and producers available in Britain weren’t up to it.”

[ BBC] The opening passage of The Man Machine, released in 1978, is a very particular vision of the future. It's the chatter of servo-motors, the slow whine of monorails, of control signals manipulating remote machines. It's the sound of abstracted production. Over six tracks and 36 minutes, Kraftwerk thoroughly and succinctly explore the impact of technology upon humanity. It's their defining theme and one which makes the group arguably the most important in the canon of popular music.

Opening track The Robots is a remarkably confident statement which sounds contemporary more than 30 years later. It's difficult to imagine a world before the synthetic sounds essayed here became so influential. The words themselves are a manifesto: “we're full of energy / we're dancing mechanic". Kraftwerk embrace the repetition inherent in dance music and equate it with the automation of industry.

Spacelab and Metropolis are instrumentals full of pathos and wonder. Their references to science fiction made fact and Fritz Lang’s vision of a future dystopia highlight cultural references that provide extra context for the album’s themes. The Model became a UK number one on its reissue in 1981 and as a result is probably the group’s best-known song. It identifies an object of desire, a female counterpart for the man machine.

Neon Lights may be Kraftwerk’s most beautiful composition. It’s a hymn to the unintended beauty of modern life whose synthesizer melodies evoke the neon glow of the city. Once again the music is utterly consistent with the lyrical subject. The album ends with its title track echoing and haunted, gliding effortlessly into a future that is now well on its way to arriving.

The Man Machine is remarkable for its consistency, elegance and absolute deliberation. It’s made all the more powerful by the marriage of Karl Klefisch’s El Lissitzky-quoting design and the group’s appearance as minor variations on a single theme. The remastering and inclusion of previously unavailable photography make this reissue the definitive edition.