Kraftwerk 2
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Kraftwerk 2 is a 1972 album by Kraftwerk. Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider have refused to reprint this album on CD or any other media, as they do not consider it a Kraftwerk album or even acknowledge its existence. Bootleg CDs were widely availble in the 1990s on the 'Germanofon' label
Track listing
- (17:36) "Klingklang" - (literally "Ring Sound", although something like "TinkleTone" might capture the punning feel of the German better...)
- (02:57) "Atem" - ("Breath")
- (03:52) "Strom" - ("Stream")
- (05:20) "Spule 4" - ("Reel 4")
- (09:40) "Wellenlänge" - ("Wavelength")
- (03:17) "Harmonika" - ("Harmonica")
The album is entirely written and performed by Hütter & Schneider, with the sessions produced by the influential Conny Plank.
Perhaps the least characteristic album of their output, it features little obvious use of synthesizers, the instrumentation being largely electric guitar, bass guitar, flute and violin. The electronics on display is generally in the realm of 1960s academic 'tape music', with much use of tape echo (for example the massed looping flute layers of "Strom"), reverse & altered speed tape effects. Overall the sound has a rather muted, twilit, dusky feel.
The lengthy "Klingklang" (also the name of the band's own Kling Klang studio in Düsseldorf) is notable for its use of a preset organ beatbox to provide the percussion track, and also opens with a clangourous Stockhausen-like metallic percussion montage. "Harmonika" features a tape-manipulated mouth organ (harmonica).