ORGANISATION: TONE FLOAT (Poland? Unofficial)
No label, no cat.no.


Kraftwerk's history, like most famous bands' history, begins with another band. Or at least, another band name - Organisation. "Tone Float" is the album Florian Schneider-Esleben, Ralf Hütter, Butch Hauf, Alfred Mönicks and Basil Hammoudi released as Organisation. It was co-produced by the band and Conrad Plank, and released on the UK label RCA in June 1970. And from here, it gets complicated.


The music the first years was rather free-form and improvised. Ralf and Florian famously met at a high school course in improvisation, and the two were at the core, organising shows, auditioning other members, Band members came and went, or stopped by occasionally, and the band name had variations, too.
 

Apparently, the band name was shortened down from something along the lines of "Organisation for the Realisation of Shared Music Concepts". The name was not used for performance work after 25. April, when they played a show billed as "Organisation Ralf Hutter". (It is interesting that Ralf was seen as the leader of the group, because the songs on the album are all credited to Schneider-Esleben, Hauf and Mönicks!) Mönicks has stated in interviews that they already had started using the name Kraftwerk before "Tone Float" was released, but RCA wanted them to use the English name since the LP was only coming out in the UK. (Try as I might, I can't find any documentation online that shows Kraftwerk billed under that name before the Aachen Open Air Pop Festival on 11. July 1970.)


The Organisation LP came out in June, according to some, and the following month, work commences on the first Kraftwerk album. Ralf and Florian are joined by drummers Andreas Hohmann and Klaus Dinger for recording sessions from July to September, and the album is released in December.


Tone Float was not released on cassette officially, and the cassette I bring here today is a much later knock-off, probably from the nineties. It has a bonus track, "Rückstoss Gondoliere", which was recorded live in 1971, and released in 1988 on Laserdisc in Japan. It appears here under pseudonym - "Vor Dem Blauen Bock" (well, Michael Rother, who was a band member in early 1971, has stated in interviews that even the more famous title is probably invented by bootleggers!)


The cassette is clear-shelled with rather sparse white print, and the cover is a small 1-panel J-card, printed on thin glossy paper. The information about who plays what is taken from the original LP, and the front cover is an adaptation of the original sleeve illustration - where the more famous band name is added, which I suppose is the selling point anyway. I know there is a variant of this that has the band names on the spine of the J-card, mine does not.






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