KRAFTWERK 2

Still far from their classic sound, the duo of Ralph Hütter and Florian Schneider better known as KRAFTWERK followed the debut album with a similar collection of freeform experimental track pieces that featured traditional instruments like the guitar, bass, drums, organ, flute and violin only manipulated and processed in the production department which was graced by Krautrock wizard Conny Plank. Utterly unique and in many ways very different from the debut, KRAFTWERK 2 insinuates a similarity with its identical cover art only appearing with a green traffic cone instead of a red one. Both albums feature highly experimental instrumentals with an emphasis on the Krautrock kosmische escapist techniques of the early 70s style that was sweeping Germany during the day. KRAFTWERK 2 is a much mellower affair with less crazy tempos and freak outs making this album is bit more surreal with Stockhausen pointillistic and abstract elements that include musique concrète, ambient and of course avant-garde weirdness.

Starting the album with "Klingklang," the track title that would find a more eternal namesake for Ralph & Florian's studio than an experimental musical piece on a long out of print album, this unique track that spans across nearly 18 minutes of the album's near 43 minute run is actually a series of musical motifs that are basically stitched together into an epic stream of consciousness. Starting out with clanging chimes and resonating metallic objects the track abruptly erupts into the classic early motorik style, the same rhythmic groove that drummer Klaus Dinger would adopt as his own and build a whole career out of with Neu! but why the hell not since KRAFTWERK basically abandoned it as well as every artistic statement developed on the first two albums only to diss them as real KRAFTWERK albums. Of course this plan that has backfired as more interest has been generated from their estranged nature from the overall KRAFTWERK canon than probably would have developed organically. Thank you, internet!

As the title track morphs into myriad variations which finds the initial motorik style incrementally upping the tempo and BPM with ever more feisty percussion and flute frenzies, the stream of sound finally melts down around the 11-minute mark and becomes more abstract and kosmische with a steady clanking and a trippy repetitive organ run and some sort of oscillating effect. It doesn't stop there though and then turns turbulent but employs some of the motorik rhythms only in crazy time signatures and accompanied by freaky guitar techniques and experimental tape manipulations, dubs and distortion. Each track after is completely different and much less varied with the second "Atem" which means "Breath" featuring heavy breathing for nearly three minutes followed by "Strom" which creates weird distortion and feedback fuzz on a guitar before morphing into a slow brooding Krautish sort of early post-rock. "Coil 4" offers five minutes plus of minimalism that barely evokes any kind of musicality at all. It's basically a warped warbling and unsettling series of soundscapes that take the freeform liberties of the album to the most extreme.

"Wellenlange" (Wavelength) basically continues the abstract aimlessness but in the middle of the nearly 10-minute track finds a bass line shining a ray of musical sunlight into the freeform chaos that the track begins as. The sounds slowly coalesce like clumps of metal shards attracted to a magnet until the piece sounds more like a freaky piece of music rather than random sounds free floating like dust. The bass eventually incorporates the motorik style of playing. The track is said to sound like some of Brian Eno's most out there experiments. The closing "Harmonika" just sounds like some sort of really intoxicated musicians picking up some accordion to hear what comes out. The results are not much. It sounds like some drunk picking up an accordion and making gibberish noise although it's still obvious that he's still trying to play something! A bizarre way to end the album but it seems that KRAFTWERK 2 really went for the avant-garde jugular in a way that the first album didn't even manage to and that is one wild of an album!

Although disowned by the band along with the two other albums that bookend it, KRAFTWERK 2 is nevertheless a fascinating early Krautrock album of unrelenting experimentation in the vein of early Cluster, Faust and Zweistein which on one hand seems pointless, completely detached from reality and utterly abstract for the sake of being as such however for those who love to engross themselves in these wild concepts and capture the experimental zeitgeist that was permeating the German music scene at the time, then this is really a captivating album for those who can appreciate the vast emptiness and sparse soundscapes of Stockhausen, Ligeti, Varèse, Cage and other classical avant-gardeners of the 20th century classical scene. Similar in approach only in the context of more modern production manipulations (meaning Conny Plank is really a silent third member here). KRAFTWERK 2 is definitely more suited to extreme audiophiles but careful listens will reveal aspects of the band's future emerging at this point as the classic KRAFTWERK sounds were gestating in between the cracks of the wild unhinged experiments. The most forgotten KRAFTWERK album of all is this second one that some of us freaks really love!