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- CLASSIC ALBUM OF THE
WEEK
- Kraftwerk "Radio-Activity" 1975 (Germany)
This
week is the 500th official episode of the Kosmik Radiation show, which
debuted on WORT-FM in the wee small hours of April 27, 2005. Our
klassik album is a pivotal but somewhat overlooked LP from the
krautrock canon: Kraftwerk's 5th album was the follow up to their
international smash hit breakthrough Autobahn,
and as with all their subsequent records it is a concept album with a
technological theme, that theme being . . . radio! They would not
acquire the funk until their next album Trans-Europe Express, and this album did not contain any "hits" to rival their songs about cars, trains, bicycles or pocket calculators, but Radio-Activity is the album that marks their transition from long-haired kosmische krautrockers to the 21st century technopop robots
we know and love today. In fact, this is the album where they started
using robot voices for the first time, arguably the final addition to
their signature sound along with the synthesizers and electronic
percussion. The title song is the best known track on this album,
though in later years they reworked it from a dark pun about radio
(like hit songs are radioactive or something) into a serious
anti-nuclear song (the chorus changed from "radio activity" to "stop
radio activity" and lyrical references to Chernobyl, Three Mile
Island and Selafield were added); other highlights include "Antenna"
which points the way toward the industrial sounds of Suicide and
Throbbing Gristle, "Airwaves" which is the most danceable number, and
the closer "Ohm Sweet Ohm" - a classical European melody played by a
chorale of electronics which sounds like the summation and grand finale
of their formative period. |
