ELEKTRO KINETIK (UK, 1981)
Vertigo 7143 066


From Polish pirate compilation to something at least reasonably official, although I'm willing to bet it was released against the wishes of the artists in question!

I rather like this one, though. As stated before, a lot of compilations of Kraftwerk's early works were put out after Autobahn was a hit, and for years ahead. I expect this was put out to capitalise on - well, take your pick: It was released in 1981, before The Model reached #1 in the UK charts, but Pocket Calculator was a modest hit, Computer Love did ok that summer (in fact, both went to #39, just inside the Top Forty) and the Computer World album started it's long chart run at #15, and add to this their upcoming UK tour, I suppose that's enough general interest in the band that Vertigo thought a compilation of back catalogue would be worth a try... again.

The J-card is pretty nice, all things considered: A simple design, with the band name at the top, the album title sandwiched between two colour stretches, and a couple of black stripes against a white background - plus the "Reflections" logo that indicates that this is a release in that well-known reissue series. The 2-panel card is printed on both sides, The music is taken from the albums Kraftwerk 2, Ralf & Florian and Autobahn, with a couple of edits exclusive to this release - Autobahn is a slightly longer (and better) fade than the one on Pop Lions and Highrail, Ananas Symphonie is roughly half the LP track, and Strom is mercifully liberated from its original intro, so you lose the 40 seconds of idle strumming before the song starts... 

Writing this piece, I fell down the rabbit-hole of Emil Schult's writing credit for Autobahn. On this cassette, all songs are credited to Hütter and Schneider, which is nearly in keeping with the original crediting: On 70s releases, it's widely stated that the track is written by the pair, but on those releases that reproduce the lyrics, these are credited to Hütter, Schneider and Schult! The mid-80s reissues changed the credits to mention Schult more clearly. So anyway, he's not mentioned here.

Cassettes are light grey and labels are dark green, reminding of the original Philips labels of Autobahn. Pretty nice, overall!







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