Kraftwerk: Radio Activity (180g) Vinyl LP Kraftwerk

This record is scary as fuck. The first time I heard this, I was transfixed. Being only familiar with the sardonic electro-pop of early 80s Kraftwerk, the drenched radio between stations sound of this record bored a perfectly paced and immaculately crafted hole in my skull. If the intensely dark, almost operatic key layers and transient blasts of yellow-eyed pitch shifting in “Radioactivity” don’t force you into a rapt, static semi-seizure, then I’m sorry, but some shit is just beyond you. This is the absolute perfect realization of the Kraftwerk modus operandi. If you can’t quite get with the full on Stockhausen brain diffusion but still would like to go into petrified critical introversion world with something, preferably something German, then I would have to recommend either Goethe or this. There is just nothing touching it for a record that can simultaneously contort your stomach and make you smile with a kind of arcane and phantasmal beauty. It’s the kind of album that will perpetually be ahead of its time and almost unapproachably daunting. Listening to this is like being cast into the ruins of the end of the world 30 years ago. If that sounds like something you’d be into, you probably already know this. If not, now is the time. Deluxe heavyweight pressing (180g) with 16 page booklet insert and a monochrome inner sleeve that reproduces the original LP artwork.

• 180 gram import reissue
• printed inner sleeve features original album art
• full color photo booklet
• part of the 2009 Kraftwerk Digital Master reissue series 
• music label: Kling Klang 2009

reviewed by Bob Bannister 11/2005