KRAFTWERK 2 @ 50

Released in January of 1972, Kraftwerk 2 celebrates its 50th anniversary this month. The album was recorded entirely by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in late 1971 as “Nobody wanted to play with us because we did all kinds of strange things ... feedbacks and overtones and sounds and rhythms. No drummer wanted to work with us because we had these electronic gadgets.”

Despite the above statement, the album is rather uncharacteristic for its lack of synthesizers, with the instrumentation being largely electric guitar, bass guitar, flute and violin. The electronics on display mostly belong to the realm of 1960s tape-based music with heavy use of tape echo and reversed or altered speed tape effects. The overall mood of the album comes across as more muted as the group explored certain auto-mechanical techniques for their music. They were gradually moving away from formlessness into more structured arrangements, but were still some distance away from the machine-like precision of their classic albums.

Along with their eponymous debut and the follow-up to this, Ralf & Florian, the group have yet to embrace this trio of early works into their acknowledged “catalogue” of classic LPs. All three remain without official reissues or remastering attempts. Though some discussion of such has taken place, it is obviously not a priority for the group, or at least for Ralph Hütter, the only remaining founding member who would be responsible for spearheading such a project. The result is that these sometimes lovely, quirky experiments continue to live in a twilight of unofficial “bootlegs”, only pursued by the bands most ardent fans.