Kraftwerk
Concert Classics

The 1975 was a pivotal year for Kraftwerk. With the addition of vibraphonist and percussionist Karl Bartos and the release of the album "Radioactivity" (the first made exclusively with electronic instruments), the German group assumed its most enduring and successful form.

Serving as a bridge between these two events was a long tour in Europe and the United States, to capitalize on the success of Autobahn, test new equipment, try out new compositions (during those concerts embryonic versions of "Radioactivity" and "Showroom Dummies" were performed, while some passages of "Klingklang" seem to anticipate "Transistor") and test the cohesion of the new lineup.

Despite the rather crude artwork (the cover photo shows the four with the red shirts used in The Man-Machine, released in '78; Klaus Röder is mentioned as a band member, though he did not take part in that tour; the last two tracks are incorrectly titled), the unofficial collection "Concert Classics" is a faithful testimony of those 1975 concerts, from which 4 long and very significant tracks are reported.

Cathedral bells, the first verses of Faust recited by vocoder with a church organ in the background, and a delicate piano arpeggio introduce us into the world of "Kometenmelodie," a sound progression that, among moog wails and syncopated rhythms, seems to evoke a run of androids along cosmic highways, fading into a dreamy atmosphere thanks to Bartos's vibraphone.

After a long pause to calibrate their complex instrumentation, Kraftwerk brings us back to earth with a nervous version of "Autobahn", much played on percussion and sampled noises (engine roars and honks), giving the sensation of traveling endlessly along the strip of gray asphalt evoked in the few essential lyrics of this track.

The trance continues with the sound bubbles of "Klingklang," a minimalist dialogue between synthesizers and vibraphone, with oriental suggestions also found in the concluding "Tanzmusik": a morning walk (or Morgenspaziergang, as erroneously reported in the tracklist) in a Japanese garden or a clearing in the Black Forest: here, the electric piano, percussion, and vibraphone weave a delicate musical web into which Florian Schneider's flute discreetly inserts itself.

In conclusion, "Concert Classics" shows a very cohesive formation, in which newcomer Karl Bartos proves to have perfectly integrated, also giving a significant personal contribution to the group's sound (although shortly thereafter he would have abandoned the vibraphone, removing much of the dreamlike atmosphere that characterizes these tracks, maintained even in the setlist of the concerts the following year, but with much colder and minimal arrangements): a faithful snapshot of an avant-garde group that was becoming a mass phenomenon.