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Radio-Activity
''Radio-Activity'' (German title: ''Radio-Aktivität'') is the fifth studio album by German electronic music band Kraftwerk, released in October 1975. The band's first entirely electronic album is also a concept album organized around the themes of radioactive decay and radio communication. All releases of the album were bilingual, with lyrics in both English and German. The album was accompanied by single release of the title track, which was successful in France and Belgium. Background Following the success of its 1974 predecessor ''Autobahn'', an album based on Germany's eponymous motorway network, Kraftwerk embarked on a tour of the United States with the "classic" lineup of the band formed by Ralf Hütter, Florian Schneider, Karl Bartos—who has joined February 1975—and Wolfgang Flür in April and May 1975. Album title ''Radio-Activitys album title displays Kraftwerk's typical deadpan humour, being a pun on the twin themes of the songs, half being about radioactivity ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk (, "power station") is a German band formed in Düsseldorf in 1970 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. Widely considered innovators and pioneers of electronic music, Kraftwerk were among the first successful acts to popularize the genre. The group began as part of West Germany's experimental krautrock scene in the early 1970s before fully embracing electronic instrumentation, including synthesizers, drum machines, and vocoders. Wolfgang Flür joined the band in 1974 and Karl Bartos in 1975, expanding the band to a quartet. On commercially successful albums such as ''Autobahn'' (1974), '' Trans-Europe Express'' (1977), ''The Man-Machine'' (1978), and ''Computer World'' (1981), Kraftwerk developed a self-described "robot pop" style that combined electronic music with pop melodies, sparse arrangements, and repetitive rhythms, while adopting a stylized image including matching suits. Following the release of '' Electric Café'' (1986), Flür left the group in 1987, f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trans-Europe Express (album)
''Trans-Europe Express'' (german: link=no, Trans Europa Express) is the sixth studio album by German band Kraftwerk. Recorded in 1976 in Düsseldorf, Germany, the album was released in March 1977 on Kling Klang Records. It saw the group refine their melodic electronic style, with a focus on sequenced rhythms, minimalism, and occasionally manipulated vocals. The themes include celebrations of the titular European railway service and Europe as a whole, and meditations on the disparities between reality and appearance. ''Trans-Europe Express'' charted at 119 on the American charts and was ranked number 30 in ''The Village Voice''s 1977 Pazz & Jop critics' poll. Two singles were released: " Trans-Europe Express" and "Showroom Dummies". The album has been re-released in several formats and continues to receive acclaim. In 2014, the ''Los Angeles Times'' called it "the most important pop album of the last 40 years". Background After the release and tour for the album ''Radio-Activit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radioactivity (song)
"Radioactivity" (German: "Radioaktivität") is a song by the German electronic music band Kraftwerk. It was released in May 1976 as the only single from their fifth studio album, '' Radio-Activity'' (1975). The song was a commercial success in France, but was not as successful in other countries as Kraftwerk's previous hit single "Autobahn". Composition The original recording features a Minimoog bass line playing eighth notes. Morse code signals spelling out ''radioactivity'' are also present, near the beginning of the track and again near the end. The second time the message continues with ''is in the air for you and me''. The song was re-recorded as a radically different version for '' The Mix'' album in 1991 and was issued as a single in an edited form with remixes by François Kevorkian and William Orbit. The 1991 version drops all references to radio and incorporates additional lyrics with a pointed anti-nuclear theme, remaking the central lyrical hook as “stop radio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Autobahn (album)
''Autobahn'' is the fourth studio album by German electronic music band Kraftwerk, released in November 1974 by Philips Records. The album marked several personnel changes in the band, which was initially a duo consisting of Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter; later, the group added Klaus Röder on guitar and flute, and Wolfgang Flür on percussion. The album also completed the group's transition from the experimental krautrock style of their earlier work to an electronic pop sound consisting mostly of synthesizers and drum machines. Recording started at the group's own Kling Klang facility, but was predominantly made at Conny Plank's studio. ''Autobahn'' also includes lyrics and a new look for the group that was suggested by Emil Schult, an associate of Schneider and Hütter. Most of the album is taken up by the 22-minute "Autobahn", featuring lyrics by Schneider, Hütter, and Schult. The song was inspired by the group's joy of driving on Germany's autobahns, and recorded musi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orchestron
The Vako Orchestron is a keyboard instrument made in the 1970s, that produces its sound through electronic amplification of sounds pre-recorded on an optical disc. It is the professional version of the Mattel Optigan, an earlier and lower-priced model intended for amateur musicians. History Vako Synthesizers Incorporated, founded by electronic instrument pioneer and former Moog technician and salesperson David Van Koevering, started to build improved versions of the Optigan under the name Orchestron in 1975. Intended for professional use as an alternative to the Mellotron (hence the name Orchestron), it featured improved recorded sounds over the Optigan. The Optigan was an organ that played its sounds from light-scanned graphic waveforms encoded on film discs. The sounds with the highest fidelity were on the outer rings of these discs, and these outer rings were used for the Orchestron sounds to improve the sound. Although the Model A Orchestron is identical to the Optigan, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emil Schult
Emil Schult (born 10 October 1946) is a German painter, poet and audio-visual artist. Biography After studying Sinology in Münster, Schult joined the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf in 1969 to study Fine Arts in the printmaking class of Dieter Roth, and later in the painting classes of Joseph Beuys and Gerhard Richter. In 1973, he finished his studies with the title of 'Meisterschüler' of Gerhard Richter. Both Joseph Beuys and Dieter Roth, as well as Roth's partner Dorothy Iannone, remained important for Schult's artistic development. In 1969, Schult lived in Reykjavik at Roth's studio-home. Schult has developed a vast body of work beginning with prints, drawings and artist's books that encompass philosophical writings, poems, comics, collages and drawings. Early on he included film in his repertoire as well as painting – later on he only worked with reverse glass painting. From 1970 to 1974, Schult collaborated with the Free International University, founded by Joseph Be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karl Bartos
Karl Bartos (born 31 May 1952) is a German musician and composer known for his contributions to the electronic band Kraftwerk. Career Karlheinz Bartos was born on 31 May 1952 in Marktschellenberg, Germany, named after his grandfathers Karl and Heinz. He was the drummer in a college band called The Jokers (later The Jolly Jokers in 1975) as Carlos Bartos, around 1965 to 1975. Between 1975 and 1991, he was, along with Wolfgang Flür, a member of the electronic music band Kraftwerk. This lineup of the group remains the most stable and productive yet assembled. He was originally recruited to play on Kraftwerk's US "Autobahn" tour where he changed his name to "Karl", as the band member's names were displayed on stage in neon lighting; "Karlheinz" was deemed too long and thus too expensive by Kraftwerk's front man Ralf Hütter. In addition to his percussion playing, Bartos was credited with songwriting on the ''Man-Machine'', ''Computer World'', and ''Electric Café'' albums and sang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Volksempfänger
The ''Volksempfänger'' (, "people's receiver") was a range of German radio receivers developed by engineer Otto Griessing at the request of Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda of the Nazi regime. The purpose of the ''Volksempfänger'' program was to make radio reception technology affordable to the general public. Goebbels realized the great propaganda potential of this relatively new medium and thus considered widespread availability of receivers highly important. History The original ''Volksempfänger'' VE301"VE301" is an abbreviation where the "VE" stands for "Volksempfänger" and the "301" refers to the date of 30 January 1933 – the day of the Nazis seized power in the ''Machtergreifung''. model was presented on August 18, 1933, at the 10. ''Große Deutsche Funkausstellung'' in Berlin. The VE301 was available at a readily affordable price of (equivalent to two weeks' average salary), and a cheaper model (only a little more than the average weekly wage ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Experimental Pop
Experimental pop is pop music that cannot be categorized within traditional musical boundaries or which attempts to push elements of existing popular forms into new areas. It may incorporate experimental techniques such as musique concrète, aleatoric music, or eclecticism into pop contexts. Often, the compositional process involves the use of electronic production effects to manipulate sounds and arrangements, and the composer may draw the listener's attention specifically with both timbre and tonality, though not always simultaneously. Experimental pop music developed concurrently with experimental jazz as a new kind of avant-garde, with many younger musicians embracing the practice of making studio recordings along the fringes of popular music. In the early 1960s, it was common for producers, songwriters, and engineers to freely experiment with musical form, orchestration, unnatural reverb, and other sound effects, and by the late 1960s, highly experimental pop music, or sou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wolfgang Flür
Wolfgang Flür (born 17 July 1947) is a German musician, best known for playing percussion in the electronic group Kraftwerk from 1973 to 1987. Flür claims that he invented the electric drums the group used throughout the 1970s. However, patent records dispute this, citing Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter as the creators. Background In the 1960s, Flür played an acoustic drum kit in the Düsseldorf band The Spirits of Sound, along with guitarist Michael Rother, who would also go on to play in Kraftwerk, and who would later form Neu! with Kraftwerk drummer Klaus Dinger. Post-Kraftwerk In 1997, Flür founded the band Yamo and released the album ''Time Pie'', a collaboration with Mouse on Mars. Yamo's next release, the 12" ''I Was a Robot'', reached number 6 in the German club charts. Collaborations with Pizzicato Five and Der Plan founding member Pyrolator were announced, and the lyrics to a song called "Greed" appeared in Flür's autobiography, but this material remains ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musique Concrète
Musique concrète (; ): "[A] problem for any translator of an academic work in French is that the language is relatively abstract and theoretical compared to English; one might even say that the mode of thinking itself tends to be more schematic, with a readiness to see material for study in terms of highly abstract dualisms and correlations, which on occasion does not sit easily with the perhaps more pragmatic English language. This creates several problems of translation affecting key terms. Perhaps the most obvious of these is the word ''concret''/''concrète'' itself. The word in French, which has nothing of the familiar meaning of "concrete" in English, is used throughout [''In Search of a Concrete Music''] with all its usual French connotations of "palpable", "nontheoretical", and "experiential", all of which pertain to a greater or lesser extent to the type of music Schaeffer is pioneering. Despite the risk of ambiguity, we decided to translate it with the English word ''conc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Farfisa
Farfisa (Fabbriche Riunite di Fisarmoniche) is a manufacturer of electronics based in Osimo, Italy, founded in 1946. The company manufactured a series of compact electronic organs in the 1960s and 1970s, including the Compact, FAST, Professional and VIP ranges, and later, a series of other keyboard instruments. They were used by a number of popular musicians including Sam the Sham, Pink Floyd, Sly Stone, Blondie, and the B-52s. The company was formed after three Italian accordion manufacturers combined to form a single company. They began to produce electronic instruments in the late 1950s, and combo organs were introduced in response to similar instruments such as the Vox Continental. The relatively inexpensive Italian labour allowed Farfisa to sell their products cheaper than the competition, which led to their commercial success. Popular models included the Compact series introduced in 1964, the Professional in 1967, the FAST in 1968 and the VIP in 1970. The success of Farfi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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