Digging Our Own Crates: Kraftwerk – Computer World

“One of the most important post-Beatles bands was Kraftwerk. The way they influenced music, the dance scene, that they didn’t touch instruments. At one performance, they just sent computers out on stage. Ralf and Florian kept refining it to the manikin look, the robot look, writing very early songs about things like computers. No one else was doing that, not like they were.” – Mickey McGowan

When analyzing most ‘80s records now, it’s unusual to find one that stands more relevant today than when it was released. Though the ‘80s is certainly unique in its synth saturation and neon-tinted zeitgeist, we’d hardly note that most of the decade’s better-known songs sound contemporary. Being a notable exception is perhaps what makes German electronic band Kraftwerk’s Computer World, released in 1981, so fascinating.

Kraftwerk is hardly little known by now; their music has been cited as an inspiration for dozens of artists, and their albums come up constantly in Dust & Grooves interviews, such as with Mickey McGowan, who claims them to be the best band post-Beatles. Yet, it seems as though the band’s reach doesn’t stray far from old-school music nerds, and I’d be willing to bet that most new generation audiences have never listened to the band’s records. It’s as though Kraftwerk were so ahead of their time that they became lost to it; every electronic sound since owes a debt to them.

Computer World mainly indulges in electronic noise carried by classic ‘80s synths, with occasional German-accented lyrics on the rise of computers, governments spying on us using our data, lonely nights with a TV screen, and, of course, pocket calculators. These sentiments are even more pressing now, making the album utterly timeless. It’s a record that demands attention, with most of the songs being well over standard length (easily the best and most well-known song on this album, “Computer Love,” has a 7-minute long runtime, and every second is worth it). Considering how inattentive and impatient the rise of computers has made us, being able to sit down and fully take in a record like this feels like a long sigh of relief (and/or free therapy). The band knows exactly when to energize and simmer into a sound and is proof of how far experimentation can take you. The resulting record is a culmination of these skills that only Kraftwerk and The Beatles may ever be able to master.

Check out our full interview with Mickey McGowan.

Watch our video version of this post on YouTube Shorts.