Kraftwerk take their electronica to the logical place – an album that deliberately sounds computerised and machine-like. Where their previous albums had themes of travel, this one opens with The Robots and finishes with The Man-Machine, touching on the replacement (or merging) of man with machine and passing through futurism on the way.
Metropolis brings to mind the Fritz Lang film of the same name while Spacelab and Neon Lights evoke images of a futuristic settings, the clean, pulsing rhythms and repeated phrases of the music creating the perfect soundscape. Only the single The Model is not directly related to the futurist theme, but it does, however, highlight the somewhat dehumanised nature of the modelling industry – the subject of the song becoming more of an object, like an android fembot, whose sole purpose is to look good and to be looked at.
Although the music is simply crafted there’s something quite addictive about it and unlike the somewhat squelchy noises of the Moog on early Seventies albums, the synths used here still sound as fresh today nearly fifty years later (I know!) rather than dated. You can spot traces of the musical DNA of this album particularly (out of Kraftwerk’s output so far) in the early Eighties electro-pop of Depeche Mode and OMD, through to acts as disparate as La Roux’s updated synth-pop and the dub-step EDM of Skrillex.
The clearest and most direct descendants are arguably Daft Punk, continuing the “we are the robots” stage persona – their soundtrack to Tron Legacy being the perfect fit, computerised music for a computerised visualisation. That world of neon and hard lines is what The Man-Machine evokes. I really liked this one. It might not have lasting power for repeated listens, due to the clean simplicity of the tracks, but it’s great concentration music. Or rather, Konzentrierenmusik, to coin a German phrase.
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