RALF & FLORIAN

In my very last year as teenager, I was to be one of the many who'd be marked for years by the album Autobahn. I would have then to spend 37 more years before finally discovering the present album from 1973! I missed it in the 70's and started my Kraftwerk flip time directly with Autobahn. What surprises me today is in fact the huge musical change that only one year brought! While Autobahn was seducing with its hypnotic repetitive simple motives and quasi bare musical bones, Ralph & Florian revealed to me some aspects I'd never thought of while talking Kraftwerk; there is a creativity flowing in many musical corners, a strange halo made of improvised parts and *still to come to birth* sequenced parts; there is a melodic flow that one year later would be considerably reduced to its most simple and minimalistic form; there are many ideas of trying new techniques (reverse playing, synthesizers as rhythm objects, new sounds versus pseudo classical ones like this hapsichord emulation in "Kristallo"); there are climates that Popol Vuh could have built themselves (listen to Heimatklänge) and more yet! I'm glad to finally have filled a gap and at the same time renewed the value of the wordsay: better late than never!