I know you all have your faves and I too have many favourites scattered across their entire catalogue, but ‘The Man-Machine’ holds a very special place in my heart, for the music within and also what it represents to a lifetime of electronic music.
If ever an act defined a generation of music that I hold so dear to my heart, it is Kraftwerk. I’m not going to get deep into explaining their use of synthesisers, drum machines and how their music has been sampled by other artists thousands of times down the years as I would bore the balls off everyone, let’s just say that i believe we would be in a much different place in the world of music if these guys had never existed. I believe that anyone who has ever enjoyed any kind of electronic music owes these guys a lot of thanks.
At just 36 minutes long it is 36 minutes of sweet beautiful bleeps, beats and layering that has never been truly rivalled to this day. This is electronic music at its wholesome root core and the fact that this album was released 43 years ago and still sounds so fresh is testament to what pioneers of any genre should represent.
I say this pretty much every day so far, but please grab your next available 36 minutes with some big speakers or headphones and marvel at the stunning genius of this album, for the first time, or for old times sake.
This is without question, in my humble opinion, the finest electronic music album ever written.
RIP Florian