KRAFTWERK 2 (Italy, 1977)
Fontana, 7299 776


Following on from yesterdays post, of course I couldn't post "1" and not follow up with "2"!


The two make up a set of the first four Kraftwerk albums, in edited versions - On the first, tracks from Kraftwerk's debut are coupled with songs off the third album, while on this, we get the tracks off the second album and their break-through, Autobahn.


The A-side has the main portion of early highlight "Kling Klang" - pretty much the first 9 minutes. Then, we get some of Kraftwerk's most pointless work, "Atem" - three minutes of what sounds like heavy breathing - and Strom, which opens with a minute of someone's first rehearsal on electric guitar. In both cases, the songs are unaltered and not edited. The next track, Spule 4, is an ambient bass guitar jam, where it has been decided that around 90 seconds will suffice. I don't disagree. Wellenlänge is also cut down to under two minutes, and I can't say I miss the rest much... Then Harmonica is featured in full. Side B features the tracks from the Autobahn album, and suddenly, the track order changes in comparison to the original LP! This starts with the last track off the LP - the intro to Morgenspaziergang, before launching into single track Kohoutek! As mentioned before, it is not commonplace to find this track on cassette, and indeed it's quite rare even on vinyl... Thankfully, this has not been edited down, and we get it in its full 4-minute glory. Then the LP versions of Kometenmelodie follow, both heavily edited - only the first minute of 'melodie 1 here, while part 2 is the German 7" edit as far as I can gather. Mitternacht follows in full, then for the grand finale, Autobahn is another edit - we get nine minutes with a fairly hideous cut in the middle.


The J-card is 2-panel, printed on both sides. The front has bits from both albums featured - the Autobahn road sign takes up most of the space, with the green traffic cone in the top left corner. The inside of the card has the same list of "other releases" from the label as the companion release I posted yesterday, and again, the cassette is light grey with bright orange labels. And as mentioned, both my copies of these has some bad staining, but I'm still very happy to have them!







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