Minimum-Maximum

Performer: Kraftwerk
Distributor: EMI Music Distribution

Notes: Kraftwerk: Florian Schneider, Ralf H�tter, Fritz Hilpert, Henning Schmitz. Audio Mixers: Fritz Hilpert; Henning Schmitz. Photographer: Peter Boettcher. Kraftwerk's vision of a keyboard-driven world of clicking metronomic rhythms and digitized sound bites may have been the stuff of avant fantasy in the 1970s (the decade that saw the band's first groundbreaking albums), but it is commonplace reality in the 2000s. This is true not only in popular contemporary music (nearly all branches of hip hop and electronica bear Kraftwerk's influence), but in the computer-dominated society in which we live. In this way, time has finally caught up to Kraftwerk. This sense of arrival marks the 2004 live album MINIMUM-MAXIMUM. The two-disc set captures Kraftwerk in action (well, as much action as you get from four men stoically manning laptops), and acts as a career retrospective. Aside from the cheers from the audience, there isn't much "live energy" here (Kraftwerk might just as easily have played a pre-recorded DAT of the performance), but the music sounds as crisp, fully realized, and dazzling as ever. In fact, modified versions of "The Robots" and "Autobahn" arguably improve on the originals, while pieces from 2003's excellent TOUR DE FRANCE SOUNDTRACKS round out the track list nicely. In all, this is a superbly selected set of the band's epoch-defining music.

Uncut (p.106) - 4 stars out of 5 - "They sound ageless and timeless and exquisitely banal because they always did, only this time the rhythms billow and float while the melodies bend and shimmer." Mojo (Publisher) (p.100) - 4 stars out of 5 - "[T]he live re-arrangements of familiar songs from AUTOBAHN onwards adds muscle and electricity to their canon....An excellent greatest hits collection."

Kraftwerk was initially part of the hippie-era krautrock boom. However, this pioneering German electro-pop group soon set themselves apart from their long-haired contemporaries by forsaking acid-soaked jams for a clean, precise sound whose mechanical aspects were part of its charm. Their catchy, simple synthesizer melodies were a key influence on subsequent generations of electronic musicians. They can be seen as the fathers of both '80s synth-pop and '90s electronica.

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