After the first mix I had tons of material left over and, with some of the obvious covers out the way, it was time to up the ante. The opener of ‘Radio Activity’ played by the First Viennese Vegetable Orchestra (is there a second?) does that pretty well.

Rare live versions of ‘The Model’ by Lloyd Cole and The Balanescu Quartet featuring David Byrne crop up and we start to see the pattern of many versions of the track appearing, it’s by far their most covered song. I think this one is possibly my favourite of all of the mixes as it features some amazing versions of ‘Pocket Calculator’, silly spoken word and the abstract cover art.

I have to say that Kraftwerk’s incessant tinkering and airbrushing of their past isn’t much to my taste (especially the erasing of past members’ contributions) and is one of the reasons why most of the content I’m putting up here this month doesn’t go beyond ‘Tour De France’. I’m not a fan of ‘The Mix’, as I found that they’d ironed all the soul out of their music in reconstructing it for a real computer age. The irony of the men who wanted to sound like machines finally attaining their wish as technology caught up with them is that they lost the one thing that gave their music depth – the humanity.

Similarly the hand drawn, painted and coloured graphics and photography have been replaced by cold, dull cgi versions of their classic sleeves. The reduction of the ‘Radio-Activity’, ‘Trans Europe Express’ and ‘Man Machine’ sleeves to basic typography and logos may bring them into a neat line with the rest of the Catalogue but it does little for me aesthetically. The one example I will concede to however, (and this happened fairly quickly back in the 70’s), is the re-draughting of the ‘Autobahn’ sleeve. Above you can see the original with its dashboard and rear view mirror most definitely placing the sleeve in the early 70’s. The removal of the dashboard on later sleeves definitely makes for a better composition but the adoption of the UK sleeve, that centered on the white on blue motorway logo, gives it the jump from literal illustration to iconic status.

Above are different front and back sleeves for various 7″ singles utilising parts of the ‘Autobahn’ artwork and below are two CD booklet illustrations from the Catalogue remasters. I assume these are newly commissioned pieces in the style of the original cover  but the hyperreal colour does nothing for me.

…and a couple of late entries: Not official in any way but linked visually to the above designs, flyers for a club my friend Graeme Ross was involved in.

Girls On Top ‘I Wanna Dance With Numbers’ 7″, Frenchbloke & Son ‘Sexy Model’ 7″, Late Night Radio 12″, ‘Dark Side Of The Autobahn‘ Mordant Music 7″ picture disc.

These are among the best reworkings I own on vinyl because the artwork perfectly mirrors the contents. I can credit the Girls On Top record for igniting my love of mash ups, I picked it up because of the cover and took a listen in Rough Trade over in Ladbroke Grove the week it came out. It was so insane I had to have it and I remember being slightly worried it would clear the floor the first time I played it out. The crowd went mad for it. ‘Sexy Model’ is a genius pairing of Right Said Fred‘s ‘I’m Too Sexy’ with Kraftwerk’s most known hit; “I’m a model, you know what I mean”. It’s also backed by a latin take on ‘Neon Lights’ and comes on transparent vinyl with a free badge. Graeme Ross, aka ‘Son’ in the duo, helped me greatly when I was first compiling the Kover Kollections too.

Late Night Radio is a mind boggling medley in the same vein as the Stars on 45 records but pitting Kraftwerk with Vangelis, has to be heard to be believed. ‘Dark Side of the Autobahn’ is an excellent coupling of ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ with ‘Autobahn’ (as you can probably guess from the title), as well as snatches of Joy Division, Throbbing Gristle, Simon & Garfunkel and Peter Cook. The B side plays the same track backwards and all of these can be heard scattered around the various Kraftwerk Kover Kollection mix series. Below is a strange artifact from Russian that I picked up, a 5″ red flexi disc of ‘Boing Boom Tschak’, these things pop up all the time for bigger name groups but this is the first Kraftwerk one I’ve seen.

Promotional ‘cube’ for record store display for the ‘Radio-Activity’ album. Sheet of stickers that came with early versions of the LP. Back cover of the UK 7″ single with a surprisingly un-Kraftwerk-like appraisal of their album.

I saw this in the window of a shop in Glasgow back in 2007.

This one veers heavily into hip hop territory at the beginning but then into more rock and, inevitably, techno areas. I was using voice synthesizers to generate ‘lyrics’ over some tracks and it contains one of my favourite mixes: two versions of ‘Autobahn’ running concurrently in the left and right speakers.

Gorefest and The Balanescu Quartet had both done versions that I noticed were very similar in arrangement and tempo and, being that the track is so long, rather than play them separately I panned each one left and right and played them together, I like the fact that they’re just so opposite in terms of style. This one originally debuted on Solid Steel on 04/08/06

(and no, you didn’t miss pts. 2 & 3 yet, I’m just not putting them up in logical order)

I’ve posted this video before but I never tire of it.

Also on the subject of ‘Ralf & Florian’, the UK pressing on Vertigo had a different sleeve to the regular release (see below), much the same as ‘Autobahn’. Both are believed to be the work of designer Barney Bubbles, although this has never been confirmed.

Emil Schult designed a sticker for the German issue of ‘Autobahn’ (right) that used the blue and white road sign and this was adapted and added to for the UK sleeve. Hardformat ran a great piece on it, arguing for Bubbles as the layout designer and there is a discussion on the subject here but the jury is still out. Also, the ‘Ralf & Florian’ UK cover below had embossing around the title and circuit pattern as well as florescent inks on the back cover.