As if Kraftwerk\u2019s sudden emergence from a self-imposed exile in 2003 to release Tour De France Soundtracks<\/i> wasn\u2019t enough for the fans, the very first official Kraftwerk live album from the supporting tour (complete with an accompanying DVD to be current with the time) was only a bonus.<\/p>\n
The double-disc set Minimum-Maximum<\/i> condenses the band\u2019s career from their early days of Autobahn<\/i> to their last studio-effort, Tour De France Soundtracks<\/i>; in a way, this is more like a \u201cbest of\u201d album, with songs arranged so meticulously. Apart from the screaming of the crowds and the reverberation of the music, the songs sound flawless and crisp. The music is so perfect that it sounds almost as \u201cfake\u201d as the robots in the band\u2019s live performances taking the place of the actual members.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Whether done live or in the studio, the production quality of this record is flawless and very well thought of. The series of Tour De France Soundtracks<\/i> numbers on disc one flow into each other as fluidly as they do on the actual studio album. The same goes for the back-to-back cuts from Computer World<\/i>, with the added nugget \u201cDentaku\u201d (the Japanese version of \u201cNumbers\u201d not available on American or European prints of Computer World<\/i>) with the lyrics sung in Japanese as the exhilarated crowd screams in the background; perhaps this is one of the few moments on the record where it really feels like a real live album. Even though it consists of parts from the various concerts on Kraftwerk\u2019s 2004 world tour, Minimum-Maximum<\/i> sails like one whole live concert. Kraftwerk has always been at the cutting-edge of electronic music, and the band gives new life to the classics that were seminal in the \u201870s but not necessarily in the current times. While the recent Tour De France<\/i> numbers are left pretty much unchanged from their original versions, the same is not true for antiquated classics like \u201cAutobahn\u201d (reduced to a mere nine-minute length), \u201cRadioactivity,\u201d and \u201cTrance Europe Express,\u201d which has a more latter-day, meaty sound.<\/p>\n However, tracks like those from the band\u2019s commercial hit The Man Machine<\/i> and Computer World<\/i> that are left pretty much like their original versions sound absolutely modern. This just goes to show that even without adding any contemporary spin, some of the old Kraftwerk songs from the days before the genre techno was even born are as fresh as anything else that\u2019s been created since. Minimum-Maximum<\/i> is a great way to discover or even rediscover this great — and often reclusive — band that has indirectly contributed so much to music. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":29596,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6395],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-41192","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-kraftwerk","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41192"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}