RADIO-ACTIVITY [AKA: RADIO-AKTIVITÄT]

With Radio-Activity Kraftwerk took a next step in their set of 4 highly influential albums. To my best knowledge, there is no earlier album in rock history that created this kind of minimal electronic pop songs.

The title track is the best track here. After a short salute to Pink Floyd's Astronomy Domine, Kraftwerk veers off into completely unexplored territories. Of course there was Tangerine Dream that had also used sequencers in the previous year, but they hardly inserted any melody in to their albumside long synth-drones yet, while Kraftwerk just needed 20 seconds to get to the point: a dead-catchy main theme that they just put on repeat for almost the entire length of the song. You couldn't get less prog then that.

The remainder of the tracks hasn't got much of an effect on me, except for Antenna. Though it must be said that the sequence of Antenna is almost exactly the same as Autobahn. Let's call it a first remix of own material. Well, even that was revolutionary back then.