Royal Albert Hall, London
You can hear the men-machines’ classical roots and the modern sounds they helped shape in this blissful 3D show
When audiences first sat down to watch the earliest moving pictures, they were reported to be terrified of the image of a train steaming towards them, and ran. No one seated in the Royal Albert Hall at the start of Kraftwerk’s three-night stint actually cringes as flying numbers pelt through the air towards them during the first song, Numbers. But it’s a close-run thing. The edges on those 7s could slice your ear off.
Limpid notes purr round our heads, thanks to the surround-sound setup. Later, as Kraftwerk play out an enriched version of 1978’s Spacelab, I’m gored by a communications satellite. Girders of block colour disassemble and spin towards us balletically on The Man-Machine – one of Kraftwerk’s greatest songs, particularly magnificent in its current remix. Everywhere are majestic visualisations of sound: waveforms, computer read-outs, flying quavers, synaesthetic blocks of colour. We are seeing them through regulation-issue 3D glasses, the better to appreciate the blissful, ominous music of this seminal outfit.
You can’t help but be joyful that Hütter and the new line-up are victory lapping the velodrome of the catalogue again
Continue reading...by Kitty Empire via Electronic music | The Guardian
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