Kraftwerk - Tour de France Soundtracks
(Astralwerks)
Beginning with several imperceptible variations on the title track (each slightly more techno-fied than the previous), Kraftwerk's first new album in over 15 years is ... a concept album about riding a bicycle!?! Sung in French! Actually, it's merely a revisit to the title track, which was originally released on an EP twenty years ago, rounded out with some surprisingly stale electronics that all add up to one long snoozefest. Sadly, the group which laid the blueprint for electronic music has deteriorated into nothing more than a sad parody of itself and the genre it helped launch 30 years ago with "Autobahn."
At least now we know where they've been all these years: trapped inside Peabody's WABAC machine in the mid-80s inside some exotic hotspot blasting Euro-disco from its multi-million dollar sound system! By the time we reach the first new track, "Chrono," Ralf & Florian are posing to refill their tyres (and that "swooosh" of air passing through the hose and over an incessantly annoying techno backbeat is about all we hear), and if you've ever wondered what we critics mean when we talk about "electronic bleeps, blurps, and bloops," just give a listen to "Vitamin," all eight interminable minutes of it.
We also get the punny "Aero Dynamik" (hey, they're German, how funny can they be?), which mines the fertile Depeche Mode/Blancmange/Camouflage triangle at the height of its power. It's all pleasant enough, but hey, this is Kraftwerk we're talking about...their first new album in 17 years and only their second in over 20! And this is all we get? I expect so much more - where's the innovation...the challenging listening experience...the EXCITEMENT of hearing "Autobahn," "Trans-Europe Express," and "Hall of Mirrors" for the first time? Instead we get stale rehashes of the dead techno scene that even the Norwegians can't breathe any life into, no matter how hard Astralwerks (via labelmates Erlend Øye and Röyksopp) tries.
|
