Fascinating Tedium

One of my real burning pet hatreds about modern life is the way in which the word journey gets misused constantly, every moron wittering on about their ‘journey’ on TV, or even in real life folks yammering on about their ‘(insert noun (like ‘wellbeing‘) here) journey‘.

Listen peoples of the world there is only one acceptable use of the word journey and that is in the context of physically moving from one place to another*. 1537 hath decreed it, all must heedeeth it!

Where was I? oh yes after spending a week in the verdant bosom of God’s own country last week, I found myself wanting to go on another, different journey this week in my front room. So, rather hypocritically given all the above, on went Kraftwerk Autobahn.

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Released in 1974 Autobahn was the game changer for Kraftwerk, granting international success and setting the template for everything that came afterwards, for them and for much of music/culture in general; they really were four lads who shook the world**.

Largely leaving behind their earlier more experimental approach, on Autobahn Kraftwerk became the knitting-needles-playing-on-a-tin-tray merchants we know today.

The title track takes up the whole of the first side of the LP, as all the best title tracks do and is a journey from Düsseldorf to Hamburg, replete with all the comforting and fascinating tedium, incidental interest of such a trek – industrial clangs, conveyor belts, more pastoral sections but above all else, the sound of the car, radio, wheels on different surfaces.

You dig Autobahn or you very much don’t^. From the starting of the car, the awesomely deadpan Strandjungen vocals, some surprisingly gorgeous flute and guitar work and above all else some of my fave bits in music! Yes, I am talking about the Doppler shift Kraftwerk mimic to show passing vehicles, I have absolutely no idea why but it just gets me every time. Maybe I should give up on all this listening to music nonsense and just get my kicks by sitting next to a motorway in my free time?

Another thing the chaps do brilliantly well is actually to provide a sense of arrival by the end of the track, which is achieved by the subtly changing musical landscapes we pass through from one end of the spiral scratch to the other.

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I have read a lot about the cultural context of Autobahn, about its sly subversion of Nazi-era pride for a sleeker modernity and a reclamation of the tainted for a more care-worn era, that it is a rejection of the whole 60’s back to the country ethos, that the twin mountains on the LP cover represent breasts^^ and the autobahn itself being a masculine endeavour/intrusion into the more feminine countryside. Whilst all or part of the above may be true I just say leather knickers to it all! I actively choose to just enjoy it without all that cultural freight.

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Lest anyone think we are suffering from 2112 or In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida syndrome here, I would say there is some very interesting music on the flip side of the album.

‘Kometenmelodie’, split into two parts, is an interesting beastie in its’ own right. Inspired by the 1973 appearance of comet Kohoutek you can actually hear the Blade Runner soundtrack being invented at the beginning of part II. The tracks convey a sense of mystery and expectation, before veering away into oddly jaunty electro boogie; the latter for reasons best known to its creators.

Autobahn also serves up ‘Mitternacht’ which takes us into electronic swamps in a Hammer Horror stylee and ‘Morganspaziergang’, which actually does sound like the morning walk it suggests. Although with the latter the German folk stylings actually start to sound slightly oriental to my ears and I really do wonder just how much Kraftwerk were taking the piss here, electronic woodpeckers and static birdsong and all.

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I really find Autobahn to be a remarkable LP still, although it just scrapes into my Kraftwerk Top 5^* lacking the tunes and the intense sadness of the group at their zenith. Which is not to damn with faint praise at all, this LP changed music, its influence on what became electro and hip-hop in the US was seminal, most of my, admittedly adolescent in nature, record collection never came close.

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I own two copies of Autobahn, obvs. The first is a 1985 reissue of the standard (or ‘boob mountain’ version as I now know it to be) with the oddly naïve/propaganda painting on the cover, no track names or information anywhere other than the label and the autobahn sign on the inner sleeve. It’s stylish, futuristic and minimalist, especially for the times.

My other copy is a 1974 UK edition with the signage cover, rather coolly the white areas are embossed^^*. I think it is the better design and it is the way Kraftwerk went for all the more recent reissued/remastered copies.

1193 Down (the road).

Glossary: Strandjungen = Beach Boys; Mrs 1537 = Scary gorgon. 

*oh and the band who recorded the excellent Escape in 1981, but that weakens the punchy prose of my intro, so lets pretend they don’t exist for the next 15 minutes.

**to nick a tagline from their only credible music industry rivals for impact on popular culture.

^Mrs 1537 ‘not this boring shite again’. Ironic given how much she enjoys driving, especially in mainland Europe. Here is evidence of us listening to ‘Autobahn’ in Germany.

^^ (which footnote symbol ironically also resembles Madonna’s bust circa Like A Virgin) in my very academic tome Kraftwerk: Music Non-Stop, which functions to remind me how little I miss certain elements of academia.

^*since you ask so nicely, The Man-Machine, Radio-Activity, Computer World, Trans-Europe Express and then Autobahn.

^^*and are therefore as tactile as Angus Young’s buttocks on the cover of Flick Of The Switch.