Kraftwerk
Radioactivity

Playing on the dual reference to elemental radioactivity and radio as a communication tool, the Teutonic Kraftwerk in 1975 released what in my opinion remains the brightest example of the legitimization of electronics in music and a perfect fusion between the icons of modernism and the atmospheres of the new horizon of European civilization.

Among antennas, Geiger counters, short waves, and medium waves, Schneider and Hutter’s project achieved a combination of technical experimentation and conceptual massification that is rarely found in that decade. Not to mention that the influence of the title track on future musical production has been so strong that it constitutes one of the most covered songs over time within multiple musical genres.

Brilliant from the very beginning, the album is a celebration with futuristic and future-oriented nuances of human ingenuity, which is already manifest in the operation carried out by Kraftwerk themselves, having built with their hands most of the instruments used for the recordings. The crackling ticking of a Geiger counter opens the album, becoming regular and transforming automatically into the basic rhythm of the piece "Radioactivity", which is one of the most beautiful, exciting, evocative songs in the history of contemporary music. On a carpet of artificial voices, interspersed with the beatings of a telegraph, the recitative-singing verses visualize in a linear way (now in English, now in German) the discoveries of the Curie couple and their implications in the destiny of men; without any catastrophic and environmental reference - as happened in the "bad" version of the remixes of the '90s - and with an extremely vintage aura.

Following is a striking series of pieces that stage a theater of Central European environments, radio stations, vague voices in the ether, and electropop divertissements that precede British synthpop which would take another five years to express itself. The track "Antenna" is beautiful, preceded by the distorted voice of "The voice of energy" and traversed by vibrant electronic shivers and metallic rhythms that evoke experimentation and imagination as if in a novel by Wells or Hugo Gernsback. Closing with the melancholic "Ohm sweet ohm" that plays on the similarity between Ohm and Home and performs its technological litany in crescendo like a celebration of the transistor era and distance communication.

I love this album and I believe it represents the first true massive exploit of Kraftwerk and the consolidation of their sonic trademark. For many still a bit imprecise and full of lengthy parts: for me an indispensable manifesto of European culture and electronics as an inalienable aspect of our civilization.