COMPUTER WORLD (Japan, 1981)
EMI ZR28-613, EMS-91030

I've been looking forward to posting this, my first Japanese Kraftwerk cassette! As you can see, here's Computer World!

Music fans all over the world love Japanese releases. Whether it's vinyl records, CDs or cassettes, Japan has had a history of going the extra mile with their physical product. Extras like bonus tracks, picture inserts, stickers, lyric sheets and OBIs are commonplace, and cassettes typically came with a long text insert inside, and a glorious outer slipcase! My pictures hardly do the item justice. The slipcase makes the front a little larger, and the Japanese text adds to the beauty of the front. On the back of the slipcase, the tracklist in both English and Japanese, and if Google translate is to be trusted, a short blurb about the album. Inside the slipcase is a standard cassette case, with a 4-panel insert. Here we get a Kraftwerk time-line on one side, and on the other: The lyrics, or more exactly someone's interpretation of the lyrics. as there are a few strange choices... "Natural ran my homecomputer". Indeed.

So we have an outer cardboard slipcase, a 4-panel J-card with print on both sides, and the cassette, which is grey with sky blue labels. Another variant exists with yellow cassette shell, and a promo, also in yellow, which makes me think that the grey one is a second edition? It is also said to be rarer than the yellow one, but they are both quite rare anyway.
 











 

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