Review: 50 years of "Autobahn" by Kraftwerk - reissued in Dolby Atmos

In 1973, the oil price crisis put the first major damper on the global economy since the Second World War. Car-free Sundays and speed limits put the brakes on the freedom flaunted in Germany. A year later, Kraftwerk picked up on the propaganda from the time of the economic miracle in their fourth album. They set it to music in a suite lasting over 22 minutes, which took the listener on a journey into a supposedly sunny future. The cover was adorned with a painting by Emil Schult showing a Mercedes-Benz and a VW Beetle on an otherwise open highway winding over green hills against the backdrop of a sunset. Kitsch as kitsch can.

When Kraftwerk intoned "Wir fahr'n, fahr'n, fahr'n auf der Autobahn" to a naïve children's song melody, not only copying the advertising slogans of the economic miracle era, but exaggerating them in almost endless repetition, they were creating friction with reality. The album was released at a time when the student movement was rebelling against the "mustiness of a thousand years" and "free travel for free citizens" no longer applied on the autobahns. This dissonance inevitably raised questions and discussions: Is Kraftwerk's music purely affirmative or does it merely flaunt this affirmation in an exaggerated manner, thereby breaking it? The band itself has stayed out of these discussions to this day. Explaining themselves would only stifle the debates and devalue their deliberately ambivalent work.

Ambivalence through affirmation

This friction can now also be heard in the new Dolby Atmos mix of the new 50th anniversary edition. With its 7.1 TrueHD core, the Blu-ray disc (released by Parlaphone for 25 euros) is far superior to the data-reduced streaming version on Apple Music. It is based on the digitized original tracks that producer Conny Plank recorded back then with his mobile 16-track studio. On the one hand, there are the voluminous sounds of the then sinfully expensive Minimoog, EMS AKS and ARP Odyssey synthesizers, which envelop the listener from all sides.

In contrast, the somewhat bumpy beat, which was recorded live with homemade drum pads at the time, only penetrates with its rushing electric snare. The bass drum – later became the dominant instrument in techno – is almost completely drowned out. But the beat in its imperfection and with its gentle tempo changes, together with the interspersed flute and guitar sounds, breathes a liveliness into the piece that was missing from the shortened and rhythmically straightened reinterpretation in the 2017 3-D catalog.

The awkward vocals also remain in the background when they are not alienated by the self-made vocoder. Then it is reminiscent of a karaoke duo in the back seat of a VW Beetle, which you wouldn't quite understand at 120 km/h. It would have been easy to conceal the vocal inadequacies and intonation difficulties with modern audio plug-ins. But they obviously didn't want to do that. The passage with the radio reception is even much harder to understand in the Atmos mix than in the old stereo mix. On the other hand, the synth noises imitating cars rushing past, including the Doppler effect, now make you sit up and take notice, utilizing the full surround sound of an Atmos system.

The dark side

While the first side of the vinyl record was dedicated to a brisk, sunny day trip, the second (night) side shifts down a few gears with two tracks about the then comet Kohoutek. Above all, the two concluding pieces "Mitternacht" and "Morgenspaziergang", which are in the tradition of musique concrète, come to life with their noises and imitated bird calls in the Atmos mix, now coming from all directions. They are the new highlights of the album and have been reconstructed so authentically by Fritz Hilpert that even the 50-hertz hum of the analog synthesizers at the beginning of Morgenspaziergang can be heard again.

Autobahn is more relevant today than ever. At a time when the road network is to be upgraded with billions in debt as part of the military infrastructure for tanks rolling again in the future, dissenting voices or dissonant nuances are just as hard to hear as on the 50-year-old album. This void must be filled by critical listeners, then as now. The record only makes it clear to them that something is missing. And with the discussion about nuclear power plants flaring up again, the follow-up album "Radio-Aktivität" is already casting its shadow.

(hag)