A lot has been written about the genius of Kraftwerk and the clean lines, hydraulic motion and pure melody of their music. For a long time I thought it remarkable that they hit straight upon their own brand of machine-tooled perfection with 1974's 'Autobahn' album and maintained a run of perfect albums for the next ten years or so. Little did I know...
One Friday, whilst enthralled by
BBC4's superlative Krautrock documentary, some live footage of Kraftwerk appeared - and one of them was playing the flute! This wasn't the hermetically perfect, proto-trance, played-by-robots Kraftwerk that I was used to. It was a more Krautrock-styled, organic version of their motorik groove. And it was played on
old-fashioned instruments - not via electrodes on the end of car aerials and hidden triggers in the lapels of their cold, grey suits.
A bit of research showed up three whole other albums from Kraftwerk which I'd never heard because, well, they weren't available. But one day I parted with a pretty ridiculous amount of money to pick up what I have to assume are bootlegs of these three rare albums.
'Ruckzuck' is the opening track of 'Kraftwerk I' and, lo, it's the track with the crazy, hyperventilating flute on it from the BBC4 documentary. Its organic delivery and peaks and troughs give it kinship with
Can and Neu, a more improvised feel that the carefully architected soundscapes of 'Autobahn', 'Radioactivity' or 'Trans Europe Express'.
'Ruckzuck' somehow manages to communicate the same sensations as 'Autobahn' - unrelenting motion along a chrome-plated future-highway - but it's created not from electronics but from drums, bass, organ, flute and, I think, a piccolo.
It is a staggering, irresistable track and it's hard to see why they've kept it unavailable all these years. Maybe the pension pot will need topping up some time soon and they'll release them properly.
Download Kraftwerk 'Ruckzuck' (krautrock mp3) (Mediafire)
