Rain
I "autobanned" myself for 5 days before committing my 5 thousandth post, which I'd like to dedicate to the legendary German band.
Wir fah'rn auf der Autobahn...
By the time that this came out, I was already gone from Kraftwerk, and got into the harder and much more fun insanity in the electronic world.
Kraftwerk's earlier albums were far better and fun to listen to, though you will never get Bapu to listen to the Pineapple Symphony at all! Nowadays, however, we tend to look at those early albums as too simple and the whole "sound" was just the turning of a knob ... but in those days, that "sound" told a story ... and today, people do not listen to any stories, unless they are told by lyrics! Ohhh on the same token, if you are blind, you must be stupid and will never know anything or learn to play music!
By the time that Tangerine Dream did "Stratosfear", the synthesizer was no longer an "experiment" and when Kraftwerk had fun with it, and told a nice, fun story with the whole cut that you really could see and "live" ... it was over ... Stratosfear, is, still, one of the prettiest synthesizer albums ever done ... and shows how much better Tangerine Dream had gotten from "Phaedra" that by comparison sounded "mechanical".
Btw, in between, catch Edgar Froese's Epsilon in Malaysian Pale" and it is, yet, another way to use synthesizers, though a bit more ambient in its application! Very pretty, but totally different than TD's approach and the very mechanical, and far easier (less musically minded!) approach that Kraftwerk took.
Also very notable and very good ... the miriad of solo albums by Roedelius and then also by Rother ... all of them very good, but rarely heard, and one of the sweet little prizes and beauties one can find in the imports now and then with some really fine pieces of music!
The whole family, including NEU and CLUSTER should be all in the same boat and listening to them is a massive treat ... but you have to "let go" your ideas of music and remember that in those days ... there was NOTHING like this at all ... and this was a totally new "sound" that scared the living wits out of a lot of people including idiots that said things like ... Tangerine Dream sounded like "washing machine music" ... and I can tell you, and you already know that if you play both side by side ... there is absolutely nothing in common at all!
post edited by Moshkiae - 2013/04/28 16:21:45