| Reviews |
All Music Guide Review:
Review by Andy Kellman
One of electronic music’s most crucial and lavish box sets, The Catalogue contains eight Kraftwerk albums remastered by founding member Ralf Hütter: Autobahn (1974), Radio-Activity (1975), Trans-Europe Express (1977), The Man-Machine (1978), Computer World (1981), Electric Cafe (aka Techno Pop, 1986), The Mix (1991), and Tour de France Soundtracks (2003). Some purists were upset with liberties taken by Hütter -- specific elements of certain songs sound sharpened, evidence of some noise reduction, and so forth -- but they are few in number and minor in effect. (The gripes were quite possibly made with the intent to prove that they know the ins and outs of these albums more than you do.) The box itself is 12 inches by 12 inches, rather hefty. The eight discs, nested in four dense foam compartments, are individually packaged in sleeves that replicate the original artwork, whether through the disc’s pouch or the slipcase in which the pouch is (tightly) housed. Each album gets its own 12-by-12 booklet with full-page images.
Review by Jason Ankeny
A concept album exploring themes of broadcast communications, Radio-Activity marked Kraftwerk's return to more obtuse territory, extensively utilizing static, oscillators, and even Cage-like moments of silence to approximate the sense of radio transmission; a pivotal record in the group's continuing development, the title track -- the first they ever recorded in English -- is their most fully realized electro-pop effort to date, while "The Voice of Energy" precipitates the robot voice so crucial to their subsequent work.
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