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Kraftwerk: Albums
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If the arrival of a new Kraftwerk album is a surprise, then its subject matter is not. 'Tour De France Soundtracks' is ostensibly an expansion of the 1983 'Tour De France' single, right down to the practically identical artwork. There is a little heavy breathing and accelerated heartbeats (on 'Elektro Kardiogramm'), but mostly the 12 tracks cross flatland quickly, fluently, with little apparent effort. The sweat and grind of mountain stages do not fit into Kraftwerk's worldview of smooth, transformative travel, with their concept of a music which synthesises the idea of constant motion.
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Kraftwerk was one of the first pop-oriented acts to record using pure electronic (or electronically processed) instruments and sounds exclusively. Many of the vocals in its songs are processed through a vocoder or generated using speech-synthesis software. In addition, a Texas Instruments Language Translator[18] was used to generate synthetic speech on its 1981 album Computer World—not a Speak and Spell as is commonly believed (though its bleeps do occur at the beginning of "Home Computer").[19] It ... pioneered the use of backing tracks that were generated by the electronic sequencing of purely synthetic sounds.
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Their single "Tour De France" was released in 1997, but it did not appear on an album until 2003, when Kraftwerk finally released Tour De France as their first studio album in over 12 years. It features 3 remixes of the title track, plus the original. The theme of the album is a marriage of the physical and mechanical of the Tour De France, and features the songs "Electro kardiogram," "Vitamin," "Minimum-maximum" and "La Forme". The cover shows 4 cyclists racing.
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After years of nearly total obscurity, Kraftwerk began to tour again in the late 1990s, and stated that they were working on new material - though speculation about release dates fell through several times. An announcement by their record company of a July 22, 2003 release ... fell through, with the perfectionists delaying again for several weeks. A single from the album, "Tour de France 2003" (a totally new track unrelated to their earlier single "Tour de France"), has received radio airplay.
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Anyone who has been fortunate enough to witness a Kraftwerk show over the past two years cannot fail to have been impressed by the seamless mix of sound and visuals that has accompanied their starkly futuristic, peerless collection of songs. Curiously, such is Krafwerk’s pristine digital sheen, that if it were not for the occasional bursts of crowd excitement, this could almost be a studio album. Only the faintest trace of echo can be heard from the various live auditoriums, so this is a superb soundboard mix.
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Though most famous for its synthpop albums, Kraftwerk began as a Krautrock jam band in the vein of Can or Neu! Its first three albums were more free-form experimental rock without the pop hooks or the more disciplined strong structure of its later work. Kraftwerk, released in 1970, and Kraftwerk 2, released in 1972, were mostly exploratory jam music, played on a variety of traditional instruments including guitar, bass, drums, electric organ, flute and violin. Post-production modifications to these recordings were then used to distort the sound of the instruments, particularly audio-tape manipulation and multiple dubbings of one instrument on the same track. Both albums are purely instrumental.
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