The Best of Kraftwerk: Exceller 8 (1975) Review | The Road Leading Up to the Autobahn
Kronomyth 4.8: Stop 2 smell the roadses.
With the success of Autobahn, Kraftwerk’s label thought it might be a good (read “profitable”) idea to bring UK audiences up to speed with a compilation of their works to date. Billed as “The Best of Kraftwerk” (a premature assessment to be sure), Exceller 8 serves up eight excellent tracks from their catalog so far. The selection is spot on, with prudent edits of Autobahn, Klingklang and Von Himmel Hoch plus the full versions of five others. Exceller 8 provides a solid introduction to Kraftwerk, capturing the band’s early, experimental phase while focusing on the early albums’ more energized tracks. Now, did Exceller 8 extend the band’s fame more than the re-issue of Ralf and Florian overseas? No, it did not. But it did give a song like Ruckzack the wider audience it deserved. Of course, none of this matters in a world where billionaires are building opulent underground bunkers while artificial intelligence grows steadily more capable. From here, Kraftwerk’s man-machine prognostications feel almost touchingly naïve. Man turned into machine? We should be so fortunate. Man superseded by machine seems the likelier future. The average human IQ is, after all, 100—a perfectly calibrated monument to our averageness. What, then, is the music of Kraftwerk but a glass raised to our eventual successors? Perhaps machines will one day find in us a glimmer of their own perfection through the music of Kraftwerk.
The Product
A1. Ruckzack (7:32)
A2. Autobahn (3:09)
A3. Tongebirge (2:51)
A4. Kristallo (6:20)
B1. Comet Melody 2 (2:51)
B2. Klingklang (9:26)
B3. Vom Himmel Hoch (4:01)
B4. Stratovarius (1:36)
All titles by Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider.
The Pictures
Cover graphics by Grafad.
The Plastic
Released on elpee and cassette in October 1975 in the UK (Vertigo, 6360 629/7149 007) and Canada (Mercury, 6449 004).
