She’s Posing For Consumer Products Now And Then

Ruhe in Frieden Florian Schneider

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I knew and rather liked Kraftwerk many years before I ever even thought of writing pretentious nonsense on a blog about them ‘mining the dark seam of humanity and humour at the very tip of intersectionality between man and machine’*.  There was that model song, the one that got played on TV, or at school fashion shows, the one that was just bespoke for all those hateful clips of yuppies drinking champagne and guffawing loudly in London.

Information being scarcer way back in those medieval times, I had no idea what it actually was until I stumbled across a cover of it by Big Black on their Songs About Fucking LP circa 1991.  Ahhh, that model song was called ‘The Model’ by Kraftwerk.  ‘I should try and get something by them’, I thought, moodily brushing my long hair out of my eyes.

Leaping into action, a mere 18 years later I bought The Man-Machine**.

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From the unsettlingly homoerotic propaganda poster front cover artwork on in^ 1978’s The Man-Machine is a near work of genius.  The album is a piece of futurist propaganda, Kraftwerk are as always leading us forwards – we have reached the man-machine stage, surely the next stage is onwards to the machine-man?

Man-Machine, pseudo human being
Man-Machine, super human being

Which is a cue for ‘The Robots’, album opener and possibly my favourite ‘werk tune ever. The zeptosecond that beat hits we have left 1978 infinitely far behind us.  It raises that eternal question about this lot, how can something so mechanised, so potentially cold (synthesized voices and instruments) sound so incredibly funky and … human.  A more learned dude than I could explain, but I’m too busy chair dancing to do so.

The Man-Machine hits us with ‘Spacelab’ next and there is just something about the delicacy of the electronic percussion that hits the spot every time for me on this instrumental.  One day I will use this as lift music in my corporate headquarters.  ‘Metropolis’ is a sadder relative of ‘Spacelab’ although mounted on just as spritely a chassis and Mr Vangelis was definitely listening to the broad keyboard melodies here as Kraftwerk perfectly captured the feel of driving through a big city at 4am in the rain.

That model song-y thing is up next and is still utter perfection.  That mix of clever pop smarts and irony would birth whole genres in the next decade, playing on that razor edge (on mirror) of glamour/banality.  It also highlights my second favourite thing about Kraftwerk the fact they are very funny, sure they play up to German national stereotypes but I always found them a very playful band.  Whatever, this kicks das backsiden.

She's posing for consumer products now and then
For every camera she gives the best she can
I saw her on the cover of a magazine
Now, she's a big success, I want to meet her again

The last two tracks on The Man-Machine are a mixed pair, ‘Neon Lights’ is less good at evoking, umm, neon lights than ‘Metropolis’ is and is a little insubstantial, but ‘The Man-Machine’ is far better fare.  Another delicate rhythm props up the gentlest of synth melodies, like tracery around the window of a long-abandoned church, whilst altered voices wash around us and that odd lunar funk lopes on.  It is an excellent, quite deceptively substantial track and a fitting finale and title track for this outing.

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Kraftwerk were not operating in a vacuum of course, robotic aspirations aside, lots of others were experimenting with synths and beats but they were so clever in what they did – taking electronic music way out there but always running parallel to pop music; always accessible. The quartet of Hutter, Schneider, Bartos and Flur made sounds that inspired incredible swathes of music and even wider culture today, just ask the 80’s popsters, the original rap crews, industrial dudes and all the Detroit techno guys.

It is what I like about Kraftwerk in general and The Man-Machine specifically, their accessibility and the manner in which they were able to add their humour and melancholy^* to their machine music, to subtly assert their humanity through the hum of the electricity.  All that and great pop music too.

In other words then, ‘mining the dark seam of humanity and humour at the very tip of intersectionality between man and machine’ – pretentious berk!

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My copy of  The Man-Machine is, sadly, not a red vinyl original German pressing of Die Mensch-Maschine*^ but a 1993 US reissue on Capitol.  I really do like that logo.

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1001 Down.

PS:  I still really like this, it’s kinda like watching something you really love burning and still being able to enjoy how pretty the flames are:

*sounds like the sort of nonsense I bang out occasionally.

**I’m exaggerating for dramatic effect, of course.  I’d bought a 7″ of ‘The Model’ within about 6 months of finding out what it was and a friend taped me Autobahn and Trans-Europe Express almost straight away, but hey, narrative.

^oh, is that just me then? maybe I just happen to like red shirts, haughtily-angled vampiric stares and lipstick on a dude.

^*not to the same extent here as on Radioactivity, one of the saddest, most beautiful LP’s I own.

*^almost all Kraftwerk songs sound better in German. Fact.