MAX HEADROOM SCREENSAVER WINDOWS
Genial lasers skim the prow of a fractured chord progression… I put on my Windows Starfield screensaver and pictured the trigonometry. “Neon Lights” started off my second disc, and immediately became my favorite, with its yawning, epic feel. Works well in the car but honestly, nearly every track does.Īnyway, if my compilation is to be believed, Kraftwerk caught a major vector into pop pleasantness. Again, I picked up on an impenetrable pathos, a funereal futurist playground. “Trans Europe Express” plays it straighter, though, and I was pleasantly surprised by the skittering drums, remembering that Bambaataa spun gold from this. The pisstake on jet-setting vacuousness, “The Model,” didn’t do much for me, but I still liked it better than Roxy Music. On second thought, there’s “Showroom Dummies,” which pairs what ought to be a goofy concept-sentient mannequins break for freedom, decide to go clubbin’-with harsh sound effects and plainsong. Is the radio, is technology, a threat or promise to these guys? At least Faust could call a track “Krautrock” and have a laugh. Here is the dark core obscured by every charting New Wave group. “Radioactivity is in the air for you and me,” sings Ralf Hütter, sounding for all the world like the narrator of DeLillo’s White Noise.
The selections got shadier, though: “Radio-Activity” is a cute pun displayed starkly, with a muted synth choir and a coolly composed singer. But it was a lot brighter than I had imagined. After twenty minutes’ navigation of tiny shifts and cheerful throb, I felt like I’d been taken somewhere, even if the track, structurally, seemed to stand in place. “Autobahn”-surely I had downloaded it at some point? Anyway, I needed to get the full-length dose, if only to understand that the thrills Kraftwerk give come not from progression, but from propulsion. I set my CD player on a washer and dove in.
I knew that optimally, I had to be surrounded by machines, and it was laundry day. Todd had compiled a generous sampler, covering everything from Ralf & Florian through the Expo 2000 single. Was there a penalty for ignoring Kraftwerk? Do mp3s of 2 Live Crew and Bambaataa count for anything? These guys are made of plastic and hanger-wire surely I could outrun them if necessary. With each purchase of Neu! 75, Faust IV, or Amon Düül II: The Düülening, my fear grew. I’d badly neglected Kraftwerk during my forays into motorik, electro-pop, and garden-variety krautrock yet while doing so, I built them up to be shadow-Beatles, the gods of a parallel musical order. They were from Associate Editor Todd Hutlock, and they were just in time. They were modestly notated ( Kraftwerk 1 and 2) and packaged with a tracklist, printed in workmanlike font-Courier, perhaps?-on a sheet of computer paper. Two discs arrived in the mail last month. “I went to see Kraftwerk at the Warfield in like 1998, and there were all these ponytailed, Indiana-Jones-hat-having, aviator-glasses, pot-bellied UNIX programmers openly weeping during “Radioactivity” while their mortified ten year-old sons stood dutifully beside them.” - Chris Onstad N First Listen is a regular column that forces our regular writers to listen to bands that they’ve never heard-but by all rights should have-and charts the reaction.
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