Product Description

Considered by many fans to be the German duo's first classic album, 1975's RADIO-ACTIVITY marked a major change of persona for Kraftwerk. Cutting their hair, shaving their beards and dressing in plain suits, Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider reinvented themselves as ascetic sound engineers as opposed to performers. Taking cues from minimalist composers likeSteve Reich or Terry Riley, RADIO-ACTIVITY explores the creative uses of repetition and limitation. Several songs are built on a single pulsing chord, and other tracks are less songs than they are brief sound pictures. Titles and lyrics pun off of both nuclear energy and radio waves, also helping to give the album a conceptual unity missing from their firstfew records. "The Voice of Energy" and the title track are among the band's finest works. As with many of Kraftwerk's records, RADIO-ACTIVITY was issued in a German-language version in the band's homeland.

Track Listing

1. Geiger Counter
2. Radio-activity
3. Radioland
4. Airwaves
5. Intermission
6. News
7. Voice Of Energy
8. Antenna
9. Radio Stars
10. Uranium
11. Transistor
12. Ohm Sweet Ohm

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7109 in Music
• Released on: 2003-01-17
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

Amazing
A most wonderful album. The simple sound of radioactivity beats the live version by miles. My favourite song is definately Airwaves. A great album with that unmistakeable Kraftwerk sound

Masterpiece
This experimental album with its electronic sighs and bleeps and atmospheric crackles is such a timeless masterpiece not because of the electronics but because of the heavenly melodies and the engaging rhythms. The whooshes, the bleeps and the disembodied voices are just the icing on the cake although they give the music an other-worldly atmosphere. The title track is mesmerising in its ebb and flow, while Radioland and Airwaves get progressively more weird. The more I listen to it, the more I think that Radio Activity is by far Kraftwerk's most varied and innovative album. What set Kraftwerk's electronics apart from most of the other synth pioneers, is the sense of classical structure that underlies the music. True, Klaus Nomi also used classic and operatic structures but he came much later. Songs like Antenna and Ohm Sweet Ohm with their beautiful melodic hooks are as accessible and addictive as their huge hit Autobahn. I recommend this album to all fans of synthesizer artists like OMD, Eurythmics, Yazoo, Suicide, Gary Numan and Sparks, to enjoy the source that most of these artists drew from to some extent.

Probably the purest Kraftwerk album
What can you say? Kraftwerk are among the most original and incredible bands of musicians in the 20th Century. This is one of their best albums. Leaving the competition standing, and massively influential to bands throughout the 80s, 90s and 00s (can you imagine any of the 80's pop bands like Yazoo, Depeche Mode, et al. without Kraftwerk?) Kraftwerk produced beautiful minimal melodic electronic music for the age of the transistor. Theirs is a music that is both sublime and simple, emotional and mechanical, electronic and surgingly euphoric. How do you do that? We can only guess and stand back in wonder. Radioactivity, the title track is characteristic - a haunting melody, a simple vocal track and a rhythm backing to die for.