Returning from our festive excursions, normal service is resumed this week as we start both a new clash and a new season. It’s electro season, which means over the next couple of months we’re going to be going through some of the most significant albums over the last 50 years of electronic music.
Kicking things off we are going all the way back to the mid-70s and two of the most influential albums in the synth-era - Kraftwerk’s ‘Autobahn’ and Jean-Michel Jarre’s ‘Oxygene’.
First up this week Tim takes us through Kraftwerk’s 1974 breakthrough ‘Autobahn’, including a deep-dive into the near 23-minute title track which so brilliantly evokes the sights and sounds of driving on the motorway (or at least what driving on the motorway was like in the mid-70s, before they all became glorified carparks, amiright?)
But there’s more than just the title track to get into on this most innovative of albums, including a two-part ode to a celestial object, and tracks that recreate the feelings of the night and the dawn. And as ever, as we meander through the album we branch off into all sorts of whimsical tangents, including roadside advertising, the absurd predictions of tomorrow’s world, and Kev’s obligatory references to David Bowie.
As promised, everyone’s favourite music critic is back with his usual nonsensical word soup, and we also marvel at some astonishingly narrow-minded contemporary reviews of the album.
In this week’s ‘can’t get you out of my head’ we somehow manage to go from talking about one of the 1970s most ubiquitous tunes to reminiscing about the very English version of the cola wars, and how we used to procure fizzy drinks in 1980s Britain.
This. Is. ALBUM CLASH!!
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