The Man-Machine

The Man-Machine is the seventh studio album by the band Kraftwerk. The album was released in a German and an English version as The Man Machine. The single release The model was a number -one hit in the UK charts in 1982.

Creation and publication

Musically, the album builds on the previous album Trans Europe Express, whereby the use of drum machines is more prominent in the background and lets the album sound overall softer. The album was in power plant own Kling Klang studio in Dusseldorf, where he was well received. The album was mixed at Studio Rudas, because the mixer in the Kling Klang Studio was not sufficient. Joschko Rudas was responsible for the mix and has been for a couple of songs from the Detroit sound engineer Leanard Jackson of Whitfield Records support, who had worked on Rose Royce's second album in the previous year. The album was produced by Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter.

Like the previous albums is also a concept album The Human Machine. Employees to highway and radio - activity with more German themes and Trans Europe Express Europe, is the seventh album thematically global and acts of future issues such as space travel, robots and big city. As a source of inspiration for the album of the German silent film classic was Metropolis director Fritz Lang from 1927. Both the album title of " man-machine " and the song "Metropolis" as well as the motif of a technology - dominated world, the Servant by the free man of complex system is degraded, are affected by this UFA film.

For promotional purposes let the band make dummies that were utilized in some press events relating to the publication.

The graphic design of the cover image comes from Karl Klefisch and based on a work of the Russian Constructivists El Lissitzky. On the cover is " inspired by El Lissitzky " noted. The cover image is an adaptation of a graphic from the children's book Suprematicheskii Skaz ( From two squares )

After its release, the album reached number 12 in Germany, 9 in the UK and 130 in the United States.

Reception

The album spawned the band's first cover story in the British New Musical Express. The NME confirmed the " almost perfect realization of their musical and political ambitions " and used on the front page a photo of the inside cover of The Man-Machine, as the band was not a photo for the cover available. Melody Maker called it a " supercooled majestic album". The uniformed clothing on the cover in red shirts and black ties marched the band incorrectly in a fascist light and pushed especially in the United States rejection.

A number of British artists have recorded the album in addition to the second page of David Bowie's Low musically and technically stage a model. The Music of Kraftwerk was played in British clubs like Billy 's, London. The use of synthesizers resulted in a wave of synth pop and New Romantic bands in the UK. One of the first epigones in 1979 was Gary Numan, the (both in black ) took the stage outfit of shirt and tie. The concept to make machines work for you, took The Human League to the tour supporting the Talking Heads, in which the band was not present and only used tape recorders and slide projectors. The early Depeche Mode presented the synthesizers, such as Kraftwerk, on stage in a row next to each other on.

Title list

Others

The song "The Model " was originally " The Model " hot, because it was about an advertising model, the current title was a misprint by Florian Schneider- Esleben.