Friday 29 September 2006

Wir fahren auf der autobahn (Kraftwerk)

This is an appalling carbon-centric view of the late C20 from German "group" Kraftwerk. Instead of celebrating the various militarily active socialist groups around in the early 70s, it chooses to issue a tedious clarion call to the users of this murderous waste of concrete. The album's cover suggests that the ignorant manslaughterers of the roads, both rich (mercedes) and poor (VW) are heading both to, and in a very real sense, from, a sunlit upland. The pointlessly continuitive melody demonstrates the incubating effect of road travel on the intelligent mind; the occasional sub-sonic breaks the service stations with their dead life. The use of synthesisers is, surely, a satire on the un (or should we say-sub, or even preter-) natural existence of the endless, soulless, moralless roads. It reminds us that we are non-eternal sounds on the false road of unliving - it is, in short, a trial, that we all attend, and when we find ourselves guilty of the greatest crime - that of destroying our planet - what do we say? "Jesus!" (oh!! how ironic); "get bent!" or, worst of all, the cry of the fascists - fuck off - ?

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