Music review: Kraftwerk - Die Mensch-Maschine (1978)

So… how do you even review such a monument? Arguably one of the most influential popular music acts together with The Beatles and Black Sabbath, especially due to this very album. Why? Because it is, to the best of my knowledge, the birth of modern electronic music focused on rhythms strong enough to possess human bodies, the so-called Electronic Body Music (that would become its own genre - EBM - in Western Europe a few years later) that made a clean break with the kind of contemplative sound that fellow germans Tangerine Dream or Jean-Michel Jarre were doing.

And it remains their best, most consistent work. A diamond of haunting and mechanical coldness calling back to their previous Trans Europa Express epic (the trio of tracks, not the album) only slightly tempered by the warmer "Das Model" and "Neonlicht" in the middle. Absolutely no filler nor truly weaker moment in those six tracks that still sound futuristic almost 50 years later!

Again, lots of words could be written to describe the sound but I implore you to at least listen to the first and most important track, "Die Roboter", it'll say everything that needs to be said.

To sum it up: even without considering their historical importance and everything we hold dear that wouldn't exist without them, I think this album deserves between 9 and 10; not an automatic 10 because I find "Das Model" mildly out of place and "Die Roboter" overshadowing.