Best Kraftwerk Solo Album

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I doubt very much it's the best thing on the list but Time Pie is not so secretly a Mouse On Mars production. IIRC they repurposed bits for Iaora Tahiti when they disowned the Yamo project.

The full version of Guiding Ray does a nice extended motorik thing once you get past the daft lyrics.

https://youtu.be/Hy4Ve43qoRQ

I don't know any of these, which are worth hearing?

Schneider / Kranemann 'Soundcheck 1967' is room recording of two horn free jazz improv, historical interest only. a year before Kranemann introduced Florian to Conny.

the Roeder albums are abstract digital electroacoustic. I think they are extremely accomplished. moments anticipate Asmus Tietchens. favorite two are the vocal cutup 'Mr. Frankenstein's Babies' & 'Potpourri', plunderphonic shredding of German chart hits circa mid-80s.

Flur's main contribution to Time Pie are the whimsical spoken word vocals, sometimes charmingly bizarre, sometimes in the way of a pretty great early Mouse on Mars album (when given a chance to work with a member of Kraftwerk they end up channelling Neu!)

the molecularly satisfying, concise riffs Bartos contributed to KW 77-86 show up on his solo records that obsessives will find interesting if you can overlook the lyrics. I still like two songs from Esperanto - if, in 1993, your favorite Jeff Mills record was 'Waveform Transmissions Vol. 1', then 'Overdrive' sounded way better than anything on 'The Mix'. and the breakdown in the middle of 'Information' I like more than most of 'Electric Cafe'.

a less spiteful thread would have polled the best KW live recordings 1971-1998. more inspiring than the studio albums.

i'm listening to mr. frankenstein's babies right now, it's good

guiding ray sounds nice too

polling kraftwerk live recordings is, i don't know, a foregone conclusion - it has to be K4 Bremen Radio 1971, right? munich '71 and paradiso 1976-09-11 are also very nice, but audience versus pristine radio recording, it's hard for me to argue for one of the aud tapes

why '71, btw? isn't soest from '70?

For live recordings I would say Tokyo 7 September 1981 is the one you need.

Soest is great, 1970 yes thank you. don't have Munich 1971! and I don't have a board recording of Paradiso and need one; I love the early Europa Endless / TEE versions before they added the triplet delay to the sequencer

if only radio / board recordings will do:

19701100 Soest
19710625 Bremen (K4)
19740125 Frankfurt HR (only board recording with Klaus Roeder on electric violin)
19750520 Denver, Ebbets' Fields (Concert Classics) (better of the two 1975 radio broadcasts overall)
19750322 Cologne WDR (Super Golden Radio Shows)
19760228 Olympia, Paris (Somewhere In Europe)
19810907 Tokyo (Virtu ex Machina) (this is the classic one, though there are a lot of hifi 1981 Japan shows with the complete setlist now on youtube where they get deeper into radioactivity/autobahn era)

reasonably hifi board+audience recordings of the 1997/1998 setlist exist for Tribal Gathering / Warfield San Francisco which are important for the 90's version of 'Numbers' and the three new songs that never made it to an album

19740422 - Leverkusen is not hifi but serviceable and notable for the 41 minute Autobahn and a truly wacky version of 'Morgenspaziergang' which turns into a non-album composition that sounds like an Irish jig complete with flutes (if this is a cover, I hope to learn what it is someday), all punctuated by the frequent sound of glass bottles being thrown into big empty trash buckets)

in the abstract, the 70's live sets have a big appeal for people who want to hear the 1974-1979 albums played in the style of 'Ralf & Florian'; mostly live percussion (only occasional sequencers / drum machines), beautifully loose playing (i.e. mistakes) - still one foot in kosmiche

but if you want to hear the 1975-1979 albums retooled in the style of 'computer world' and jacked up machine versions of 'autobahn' 'TEE' & 'radioactivity' that's the 1981 shows

/1974 not 1975-1979

(someday I will learn the patience to proof posts before submitting)

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