Rightly held up as one of the very finest records of all time, the making of Radiohead’s exceptional OK Computer would led the Oxfordshire quintet to wade further out into the sonically unknown than ever before. Working for the first time with the man who would soon become known as the Radiohead producer… 

We live in the age of the computer, from the portable rectangles in our pockets that allow us to capture, share and interact with our friends all over the world, the flip-open laptops and MacBooks which many of us spend our working hours plugged into, and those increasingly lounge-dominating HD and 4k televisions, streaming our evening’s entertainment for a monthly fee. Wherever you turn in the 2020s, it’s difficult to avoid the realisation our lives have become inextricably tied to computers.

But back in 1997, computers were still clunky desktop affairs. With their gradual infiltration of our daily lives then a pretty unthinkable idea for most, the rapid development of computing – not least the potential of the internet – led a swelling company of forecasters feeling uneasy, particularly as an unknowable new century ominously loomed.

That foreboding anxiety is central to Radiohead’s critically lauded OK Computer. Via its 12 tracks, Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Ed O’Brien, Colin Greenwood and Philip Selway anticipated a soulless, tech-saturated future. Yorke’s lyrics alluded to the fast-paced, casual violence of an interconnected world (Paranoid Android), Hordes of faceless, insect-like commuters, heads-down within a sprawling modern city network (Let Down) a resulting sense of social isolation (Climbing Up The Walls) and a prevalent back-watching paranoia – a gnawing fear that a 1984-like authority would deem you cancel-able and bundle you off somewhere unpleasant (Karma Police, Lucky). It’s a vision that, in retrospect, seems eerily prescient.

Prior to OK Computer’s release, Radiohead were mainly regarded as being an angst-ridden guitar band, having only really dented the public consciousness with 1993’s unrepresentative outsider-anthem Creep. While 1995’s The Bends foreshadowed a much more colourful musical scope, it wasn’t until OK Computer that Radiohead’s reputation as sonic frontier-expanding experimentalists was established.

ENLISTING THE RADIOHEAD PRODUCER

The sound of their new album was always intended to be a departure, and while The Bends had featured occasional forays into diverse instrumentation, a greater prevalence of off-the-wall arrangements defined OK Computer, and would shift the perception of Radiohead in the eyes of the world at large. Though the quintet had the desire to self-produce, they enlisted Nigel Godrich to help with the recording sessions, having assisted John Leckie back on the sessions for The Bends. The technically-minded Godrich proved to be an indispensable element to the record’s production, so indispensable in fact, that the band would subsequently use him as the man to helm on all their successive albums. He would become the Radiohead producer.

Though initial sessions took place at Radiohead’s newly constructed Canned Applause studio in Didcot, creeping dissatisfaction with the environment as the right creative space to work up their ideas pointed them towards a much more atmospheric recording location.

Bath’s St Catherine’s Court proved a better fit. A 16th century mansion owned by actress Jane Seymour (and previously used by The Cure to record their Wild Mood Swings album), St Catherine’s Court’s roomy ambience and natural reverberation would impart discernible character into the recordings. A notable example is Exit Music (For a Film)’s gloomy vocal, which was captured half-way up the Court’s stone staircase. “It was the band and me and Peter ‘Plank’ [Clements] who was their roadie.” Godrich told Rolling Stone, “Literally, it was just me [as Radiohead’s producer] on the album. I didn’t have an assistant; I didn’t have any help. Plank had never been in the studio before, but he’d help me lugging the stuff around. It was the seven of us plus the cook and Mango, Jane’s cat. The gatekeeper looked over the cat. He’d say, ‘Don’t let the cat in the TV room since it pisses on the carpet.’”

“I think that’s one of the things that makes this record different is the fact that we managed to capture these old sorts of 15th through the 18th century rooms that we recorded a lot of the album in.” Colin Greenwood told NPR’s All Things Considered. “You set up a bunch of microphones in a room and the ambience is going to be different from room to room.” To further expand the spacious ambience, Radiohead’s producer brought along his EMT 140 Plate Reverb.

Setting up a control room in the house’s library, Godrich and the band recorded most elements live “When you’re recording a band, it’s a bunch of microphones, a mixing desk, and a multi-track tape machine. That’s it. There’s a bit of computer jiggery-pokery if need be. but basically they’re a band, and they play together really well.” Godrich told The Mix. Among the gear that Godrich, Plank and the band installed at St Catherine’s Court were an Otari MTR-90II two-inch tape machine and both MTA series 980 and Soundcraft Spirit 24 mixing desks. While most of the gear was relatively traditional, Godrich used the then-new Pro Tools  software to polish the mixes. Fittingly, further toes would be dipped into computer music-making as the sessions continued.

At this stage, the band were primarily a guitar band. Godrich mic’d up Thom, Jonny and Ed’s guitar amps with a set of fairly straightforward Shure SM57s. Yorke stuck to his Fender Twin Reverb, while Ed and Jonny leaned on a classic Vox AC30 sound for clean tones, with Greenwood’s Fender 85 and O’Brien’s Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier Trem-O-Verb being unleashed when a crunchier overdrive was needed.

On the bass front, Colin Greenwood’s sunburst Fender Precision bass was output via a malleable Gallien-Krueger 800rb head in tandem with a beefy Ampeg SVT 8×10 cab.

EVERYTHING OK?

The songs that were being crafted at St Catherine’s Court were sounding like the best the band had yet written. Scene-setting opening cut, Airbag was defined by both Greenwood’s soaring riff in A major, and a hypnotic drum loop (captured with an Akai S3000 rack-mounted sampler, later edited on a Mac). Taking cues from the likes of DJ Shadow. While Thom and Phil were responsible for capturing the required loop, Godrich felt its character lacked edge. Running it through Greenwood’s pedalboard, imparted the right amounts of distorted bite, phasing and occasional wah to its sound.

The multi-sectioned Paranoid Android would take a while to find its shape. Starting with an acoustic-oriented arrangement, the track expanded into a head-banging, heavy-riff dominated rocker, before coalescing into an ethereal, haunting mid-section. Though both of the track’s ‘heavy’ sections were pretty similar, they were recorded months apart. This lead Godrich to have to manually merge each element to just one piece of 24-track tape. Trimmed down by Radiohead’s producer from 14 minutes to a more palatable 6 minutes and 30 seconds, the song would become a crucial statement of the band’s innovative intent, bubbling with both off-kilter guitars and synthesiser textures.

Among the synths that were harnessed on the album, there included an original Novation Bass Station (for the cavernous grind of Climbing Up The Walls) a Korg Prophecy – used to create the theremin-like sounds under the surface of Airbag. The analogue sound of a Moog and Mellotron were also called upon, as well as a quirky ZX Spectrum-based synth for the bubbling outro of Let Down.

On that subject, the uplifting Let Down was recorded in the master ballroom at 3am. Yorke had been Inspired to write its nihilistic lyric when sat in a pub one night. Propulsed by Greenwood and O’Brien’s sparkling arpeggiated Fender Starcaster on Rickenbacker riff (played in 5/4, as opposed to the track’s bpm of 4/4 to add a sense of floaty groundlessness) Let Down was perhaps the most optimistic-sounding record on an album that was shaping up to be darker than anything the band had previously written.

That darkness was evident on two other key tracks, the haunting, nursery-rhyme like arrangement of the now-ubiquitous No Surprises and the chilly uncertainty of Karma Police. Despite being recorded as a song in its entirety, Karma Police wasn’t quite working for Yorke. “We went out for a pint and he sort of complained about how he didn’t like the second half. He asked ‘Can we construct something from scratch’.” Recalled Godrich in Rolling Stone, “It was the first time we’d done that. From the middle section to the outro, it’s a completely different technique of building up a song. It’s not like the band playing. It’s just samples and loops and his sort of thing over the top, which sort of was the forerunner of a lot of things to come, good or bad.” Alongside this sonic maelstrom is Ed O’Brien’s self-oscillating delayed guitar, using a DMX 15-80s digital delay.

Across the sessions, the band pushed boundaries both sonic and conceptual, yet there was still room for more traditional fare. The squalling riff-age of Electioneering harked back to the likes of The Bends‘ more frenzied guitar freakouts, while the Bosnian war-inspired Lucky originated as Radiohead’s contribution to the Help compilation. While these tracks didn’t require too much left-field engineering, Godrich was keen to capture Yorke’s vocals as clearly as possible, using both a Neumann Valve 47 and Australian Rode Valve mic on Yorke’s vocals across the album. “I haven’t used much processing, just a bit of plate reverb, or a short delay.” Radiohead’s producer told The Mix, “Some singers just have a great tone, and [Thom] is one of them, so it’s not hard work. The vocals haven’t ended up very loud because it’s not a pop record, but it’s something I’m very conscious about. I’m always thinking, can you hear what he’s saying, because his lyrics are so great.”

With the album recorded, string recording took place at Abbey Road Studios, while full mixing took place at both AIR and Mayfair studios. The project then returned to Abbey Road for mastering. From all involved, especially Radiohead’s producer, there was a building sense that something monumental had been achieved.

ON A ROLL

Upon its release, on May 21st 1997, OK Computer soared to the apex of the UK charts, and was fast simultaneously hailed as a modern masterpiece. “The record is brimming with genuine emotion, beautiful and complex imagery and music, and lyrics that are at once passive and fire-breathing.” Enthused Pitchfork, while NME’s James Oldham read the record as being motivated by one overriding theme; “Three years away from the millennium, Yorke wants to leave the planet and escape from the routine and clutter of life.” and praised the record’s attempts to stretch, rather than stagnate imaginations of its listeners, both thematically and sonically.

Radiohead’s producer was deeply proud of the record he’d made, with a band who had soared well away from many of their peers “Compared to The Bends it’s fairly uncommercial, it’s definitely a step sideways, but it’s the right thing for them to do.” He told The Mix, “As a band they’re very innovative musically, and in their approach to everything they’re very open minded. It’s an art to them, and that is so refreshing to be around because with the guitar thing people always wanna go backwards.”

The post Deep Cuts: The Making of OK Computer appeared first on Audio Media International.

Celebrating its 30th anniversary, Primal Scream’s Screamadelica was a significant milestone,  born from the technicolour acid house explosion that changed British music culture forever. We caught up with co-producer Hugo Nicolson to learn about his involvement in the record, collaborating with Andrew Weatherall and how he helped bring this classic album to life…

At thirty years young, Primal Scream’s Screamadelica still sounds as gloriously genre-twisting and life-affirming as it did when it first exploded into 1991.

As an album, the Scottish gang’s third long-player occupies a pivotal place in many record collections, revolutionising not only the fortunes of the band but the very fabric of British pop culture. Landing as acid house and ecstasy were still tearing up and down the land, the record defined the wide-eyed zeitgeist of those times, effortlessly blending rock and rave over its 11 tracks. The LP helped elevate the careers of Alan McGee’s Creation Records and Primal Scream, with the band scooping the first ever Mercury Prize in the year of its release.

Despite the success and acclaim, its origins were auspicious. Since their inception, Bobby Gillepsie’s band of rock and roll loving wreckheads had struggled to land an identity that fit, veering from the indie moments of 1987 debut Sonic Flower Groove and their guitar-heavy self-titled follow-up. On Screamadelica, the group opted to flip the switch after falling in love with dance music. They chose to work with different producers to elevate their sound and embrace electronic music – primarily the late, great Andrew Weatherall and collaborator Hugo Nicolson, who helped transform their original tracks.

“I had never heard of Primal Scream or Andy Weatherall when I first started on the project,” laughs Hugo, when reflecting on how he became embroiled in recording. “At the time, it was just another job and I had no idea how important it would become.”

Hugo’s studio career was initially inspired some years earlier by watching Paul McCartney using a mixing desk on children’s TV show, Blue Peter, Seeing a musical world he wanted to enter, Hugo knocked on the doors of various local studios asking for work experience until one took him in.

“The first studio I worked at asked me if I wanted to do some painting for them, then sit in on sessions in the evening,” Hugo explains. “Before long, I started helping out running the studio when people were away and sat in on recording for the Cocteau Twins when they were making Victorialand, their breakthrough album. From there, I managed to land a job at the Townhouse as a tape op.”

Meeting Weatherall

Hugo spent four years at the Townhouse, working with a range of different artists including idiosyncratic solo star Julian Cope before his manager got the call asking for him to join DJ Andrew Weatherall in the studio. He took himself to Battery Studios where the pair met for the very first time.

“Andrew assumed that every engineer could program and I was like, ‘I’m not very good at that’,” says Hugo of this first meeting. “I asked a friend to help me, then I worked out how to arrange everything on the SSL board. Andrew loved what I did, he was ecstatic when we first started collaborating. For me, I was pretending to be Adrian Sherwood who I had just worked with.”

Hugo cites the dub studio pioneer as an important influence because of his raw studio skills and intuitive approach. Rather than bury himself in technical prowess, Sherwood would go by musical instinct, a maxim which Hugo found inspiring and applied to his work on Screamadelica.

“At the Townhouse, you’d work with plenty of A-list producers, engineers and artists but I wasn’t really learning much from them,” Hugo explains. “When I met Adrian, I was really blown away by how he would manhandle the desk. It was a real eye opener, not to tiptoe around the music, but really go at it in terms of taking it apart.”

“Just Destroy It”

Hugo was drafted into work on the project after Andrew had already achieved success with an inspired reworking of the band’s I’m Losing More than I’ll Ever Have. His first version of the remix was deemed too close to the original so he went back and ripped it apart. In a recent interview after Andrew’s death, Bobby Gillespie remembers how Primal Scream guitarist Andrew Innes told the producer “just fucking destroy it”. The new version, dubbed Loaded and now featuring an iconic sample from Peter Fonda film, The Wild Angels, reached #16 in the charts. When Hugo joined the project, he remembers the atmosphere in the studio as a wildly creative one.

“The band loved Andy’s version of Loaded so it just felt like we could do whatever we wanted in the studio,” explains Hugo of their collaboration. “Usually, there’s normally a lot of politics when you’re the producer and you need to be very mindful of the band. But in this situation, we had carte blanche to go wherever we wanted with the music. Primal Scream would come down occasionally just to vibe but it was a very free, creative experience.”

Andy and Hugo had met at Battery but spent much of their time working out of Eden in Chiswick next door to Paul Oakenfold and Steve Osborne. They were producing Manchester’s Happy Mondays, another unconventional group fusing guitars and beats.

“That’s where we spent most of our time – and it was exciting to be next door to the Mondays,” recalls Hugo.

“It was an interesting way of working as I felt like we were hired as remix guys. Every morning, we’d have the tapes and Andy would have a specific idea. He really loved some of the My Bloody Valentine loops so he’d play some reference tracks, then I’d go to the computer and try to put something together.”

Crafting Screamadelica

Hugo and Andy had various multitrack tapes with different chord progressions and sounds Primal Scream had put together. The producers would cherry pick the elements they liked, load them into the samplers and begin building the music from there.

“It was initially tricky to get things in time,” says Hugo of the challenges stitching the songs together. “I’d find sections that would feel like an intro, work on that, then record it before moving onto the next part. It was challenging to get things aligned in time but once you had that, it’s quite fun and fluid. I knew how to work the computer on the desk so I could manipulate it in any way I needed.”

Hugo lists the Akai S1000s and S1100s as samplers at the heart of their process alongside a Korg M1 and an MPC 60 he acquired on his previous travels in Japan.

“We were also renting a lot of gear to do these remixes, then using this to gradually build something up,” he says. “Some tunes like Shine Like Stars, I’m Coming Down – these were less edits and more like one piece of music.

For the majority of their time together in the studio, Hugo says he could do no wrong in the eyes and ears of his collaborator. “Andy was always so enthusiastic during the making of Screamadelica,” he states. “The only times he would slow me down was when we were doing arrangements, I would always want to move the vibe on sooner, whereas he would let things go on and on. This seemed like more of a DJ mentality – if you find something good that works, then you’re happy to continue with it for a while.”

Don’t Fight It, Feel It

Hugo’s favourite tracks on the record veer from I’m Coming Down to Come Together alongside Don’t Fight It, Feel It. The latter’s final version was put together rapidly compared to some of the other moments on the album.

“We’d normally do tracks over a couple of days and had spent a day and half on a version of it,” he remembers. “Once we’d finished it, Andy said why don’t we have another go at it and I didn’t think we could do it.”

“I programmed the gate to open to a certain rhythm, put everything through the gate. Then fucked with it, added the backwards bassline, some extra elements, then suddenly it was there in its form. It took just a few hours to do but everyone loved it and it made the final version.”

While the album perfectly encapsulates the rush of a night out, bleeding into the morning after, Nicolson’s musical highs would come once a track had been successfully completed.

“If I felt something was good, I was just glad I had got away with it,” he laughs. “I was at the limit of my abilities. If something would work, then I’d be like, that’s a relief. Then we’d do the next bit and I’d try to maintain the quality. The euphoric bit for me would be when I’d listen to it at home, that’s where I’d get my kicks.”

Coming Down from Screamadelica

After Screamadelica was finished, Hugo went on tour with the band for a year and a half, pushing himself out of his comfort zone again both in terms of performing and the rampant acid house hedonism he was surrounded by.

“I ran all the MIDI gear on stage, and tried to be Adrian Sherwood again by dubbing everything up, possibly too much as I was so nervous about being there,” Hugo remembers.

“I wasn’t the greatest rock star either on or off the stage, and it was hedonistic. I’d always wanted to go on tour with a band, but I went on tour with the most rock and roll one in the world at the time. I was like what the fuck is going on?”

These days Hugo is based in LA, investing his time in working with unsigned and emerging talent as well as releasing his own dance music productions. His career has taken in various stints as an engineer with the likes of David Holmes and Youth. Unsurprisingly, he looks back fondly on Screamadelica as it reaches its 30th anniversary.

“The record itself does give me a warm glow,” he says. “It was a very creative time for me, but it felt so positive everywhere else too. Everyone seemed optimistic and had this great attitude.”

“When people hear this record, they’re taken right back to that period of time. It recaptures those feelings, that energy. It may not have lasted very long, but it was very, very special.”

Visit Hugo’s website for more information on his work

Primal Scream will play a series of anniversary shows in the summer of 2022.

Visit the official Primal Scream website for more information

The post Deep Cuts: The Making of Screamadelica appeared first on Audio Media International.

Kraftwerk’s Autobahn album changed the course of musical history;  from Bowie to dance music, everyone took leads from the recording, and its influence can be felt large over the last five decades of popular music. We trace the Kraftwerk synth history and detail the studios and gear behind the legendary LP.

Autobahn was the first breakthrough electronic recording. Its synth-bass lines proceeded Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder’s ‘s I Feel Love – many a 70s disco dancer’s first taste of a new electronic approximation of traditional instruments – by some three years and an edit of its lead track became a top 30 hit on both sides of the Atlantic… in 1974!

Its tones were heard, absorbed and represented by the influencers of the day. It sent Bowie to Berlin and Eno, Bambaarta, The ‘League, Numan and so many more to their local synth stores and Maplin catalogues. Kraftwerk’s synth baton got passed down through the generations: the ravers, Daft Punk and the rest. The legend grew and, if you are to believe the hype, Kraftwerk, with a big dollop of help from this breakthrough album, are now responsible for (deep breath) the drum machine, live electronic performances, synth pop, hip hop, techno, trance, breakbeat, EDM and, well, dance music itself.

SAY LESS, MAKE MORE IMPACT

Yet the band behind Autobahn, its recording, and the studios in which it was recorded, have remained so shrouded in mystery over what will soon be 50 years – largely because Kraftwerk talk so little about their history, that the band’s reach and influence has, become even bigger, and almost cult like.

But, as with so many legends, the story behind Autobahn is a little more down to earth. One studio in which is was partly conceived and recorded, Kling Klang, for example, was really just an old industrial unit in a backstreet in Germany at the time. The synth sound on Autobahn could have been seen to have arrived fortuitously. But as ever, a great recording is so often the sum of its lucky breaks, and the band had certainly done the groundwork to deserve them.

THE KLING KLANG EFFECT

It’s easy to overlook that Autobahn was actually Kraftwerk’s fourth album. The band’s first three LPs, Kraftwerk (1970), Kraftwerk 2 (1972) and Ralf und Florian (1973), were later dismissed by the band as ‘archeology’, largely you assume because they didn’t feature (with the exception of the third album) much in the way of Kraftwerk’s later signature electronic sound. A lot of this, of course, was down to the equipment available in Kling Klang Studios, the band’s main HQ for their early recordings. And back in 1970 when the studio opened, synths were not to be seen or heard.

A new Kraftwerk Kling Klang studios is now located at Meerbusch-Osterath in Düsseldorf, and has been there since 2009, but the legendary one was, according to Kraftwerk lore, a place cut off from civilisation, rarely accessible and probably with the kind of security straight out of a bond villain’s lair, and its location, of course, a closely guarded secret.

Now you’ve only got to thank an increasing number of Kraftwerk followers with cameras to find out where Kling Klang was located: 10km away from the new Kling Klang at Mintropstrasse 16, Düsseldorf. Google map it now and you can see an arch. Walk through that arch, follow the ‘Elektro Müller’ name, turn right and that’s where Autobahn and at least five more era-defining Kraftwerk albums were conceived.

The ‘studio’ is now occupied by film makers, web designers and sound designers – the kind of companies you might expect in any back street industrial unit to be occupied by in 2021. You get occasional Kraftwerk fans writing graffiti, apparently. It’s frowned upon and quickly removed. Abbey Road this isn’t. But from 1970 onwards it might well have been just as influential…

CRAFTING THE SYNTH SOUND

Kling Klang started as a sound-proofed 60 square metre room with rooms leading off this main room for storage and other purposes. “When we first moved in, we started recording with stereo tape machines in preparation for our first record,” Ralf Hütter told Electronics & Music Maker back in 1981, in pretty much the only interview where he has ever discussed the inner workings of Kling Klang. He revealed how they self produced at least the first three albums and used cheap drum machines – one of which was likely to be an Echolette/Elka Drummer One – and echo units for most of the rhythmic effects across the recordings.

Keyboard-wise, the band started with an old Hammond Organ, with Kraftwerk synths – initially a Minimoog and EMS Synthi AKS – not arriving until ’73, the year when the actual ‘Kling Klang’ name was born. “Commercial synths came fairly late into Germany and it wasn’t until the third album that we started using them”, Ralf said in 81. “By then Wolfgang Flür had joined to play a custom built drum system: he was our first percussion player to accept electronically produced drums.”

“When I joined the group there was nothing especially electronic,” Wolfgang confirmed to Computer Music. “Ralf played a Farfisa and Hammond organ and Florian played a flute. He had an echo tape machine and amplification for effects but that was all. They had a broken drum set for me and I said: ‘I’m not playing that! We need a new kit.’ But they didn’t want to get one.”

THE BEAT MACHINE

Flür claims to have married the drum pads to the electronic beats, as do Schneider and Hütter, but either way Kraftwerk, were at the cutting edge of electronic beats and ready to rock them into their fourth long player, along with those evolving Kraftwerk synth sounds. And the idea for those came, at least according to Flur, from recording sessions away from Kling Klang (very probably in 1973 for the Ralf und Florian album), at legendary producer Conny Plank‘s studio in Wolperath, the studio, eventually used for much of the rest of the recording and mixing of Autobahn.

“Florian was very nervous and very excited because they [Conny’s studio] had a little machine that looked like a home organ made from wood,” says Flür. “I said, ‘what’s so special about it?’ and he said, ‘look at the knobs, the filters and all of that – it is a ‘synth-e-siser’!’. I hadn’t even heard the name but he connected it and it was the first time I’d hear that fat analogue sound. That was the Minimoog and we thought: ‘this is the next step’. First the drum machine, Ralf then had the Minimoog and Florian then bought an ARP synthesiser.”

KRAFTWERK SYNTHS

So we have the legendary Kraftwerk synths in play and, with a self-made system of six electronic drum trigger, the beats. But another slight massaging of the legend is that Autobahn was the first purely electronic Kraftwerk album. In fact it’s more of a close-to-complete journey from the band’s more psychedelic, experimental and instrumental rock roots to their vocoded and synthetic destiny. It actually still features flutes and a lot of acoustic finery, still found in Kling Klang at the time and recorded between that studio and Plank’s.

Indeed some reports suggest that the recording of Autobahn was split so much between Plank’s studio and Kling Klang that Plank would drive a truck containing recording gear to Düsseldorf, just to patch into Kling Klang for key elements. 

But it would be the electronic side of the recording from those synths at Conny’s studio – and very probably the many journeys along the A555 autobahn between Kling Klang in Düsseldorf and Plank’s studio’s – that would become the backbone to the album and propel it into the history books.

The title track and concept is more to do with the trance-like status we all get into when driving, everything being subconscious and automatic, and the music was a perfect backdrop for this concept. It was realised by a combination of Kraftwerk’s synth arsenal – the ARP Odyssey, Moog and EMS – with the Moog taking bass duties via Hütter and the ARP the lead lines played by Schneider (roles both synths would become synonymous with over the following decades). On top of Flür’s electronic beats there were other future Kraftwerk classic: vocoded and real, yet naive-sounding vocals. “We travel, travel, travel down the motorway,” is a lyric (written by the band’s extra member Emil Schult who also created the album artwork) that only Kraftwerk could get away with.

And it could only be Kraftwerk who could bring flute, guitar, and real and synthesised car noises (door slams, engine noises and synthesised wooshes) to the Autobahn party. But when the party is just under 23 minutes in length, why not? There was even time for a menacing bass and vocoder section half way through that just might be solely responsible for launching minimal techno. Indeed there’s a lot more in this title track than either you will remember or give it credit for. With the huge benefit of hindsight, listen to this opus again in 2021 and you easily can pick out so many other parts of electronic music’s history – ambient, musical drops, techno bleeps, EDM arpeggiations – over its duration. It’s a massive track and it is the album.

THE OTHER HALF OF KRAFTWERK’S SYNTH ODYSSEY 

That’s not to say other tracks on the LP don’t play their part, but whenever you mention Autobahn in hallowed and hushed tones, it’s not the track Komentenmelodie 1 you’re talking about. That said here’s a track that – and we’re pretty sure we can still pick out opposing ARPs and Moogs – could have inspired some of the lower parts of Bowie’s Low and it does serve as a melodic introduction into Autobahn‘s ‘other’ great moment, Komentenmelodie 2.

If Autobahn the track laid the template for so many dance music genres then Komentenmelodie 2 was the precursor to synth pop, a jaunty ride off the motorway along a B-road to the beach. It’s a glorious, ever building cycle of synths and organs, underpinned by the Moogs and lead by the Odyssey and EMS. If anyone tells you that Autobahn the album is a one-trick pony, play them this – a track that launched a thousand OMDs.

Of the remaining two tracks Mitternacht is a standout, opening like a come-down track at Cafe Del Mar before hiding itself behind the sofa as Kraftwerk’s synths start yelling like hyenas. Ambient, dark electronica, whatever, it served as a counter to the lighter pop sensibilities of Komentenmelodie 2 before the synth birdsong and stochastic random notes of Morgenspaziergang close the album in as ambient a way as possible. Bidding a lovely flutey, ‘natural’ goodbye, this signified not only the end to the album but any acoustic sensibilities the band would have from that moment on. From here on in it was ‘Goodbye real, Hello synthetic’ and in that sense it is the perfect closing track.

And that is Autobahn, recorded and conceived in Kling Klang and Conny’s studios and the album that bridged the gap between Kraftwerk’s past and all of our futures.

DEEP CUTS EXTRA: MORE KRAFTWERK SYNTHS AND EFFECTS

While the ARP Odyssey, EMS-Synthi and Moog Minimoog were Kraftwerk’s synth stars of the show, flutes, atmospheric guitars, effects a plenty (including echo units and phasers like a Schulte Compact Phasing A and Mutron Biphase), and other acoustic instruments all came in to play during the Autobahn recording sessions. Beats were played electronically or by way of rhythm units like a Farfisa Rhythm Unit 10.

Autobahn was also one of the first albums to feature instruments especially created in Kling Klang and Conny’s studio, built by Klaus Röder (who played guitar and violin for some of the Autobahn sessions) and Schneider himself. Some of these might well have been simple customisations like an adapted Vox Percussion King, but others, including the so-called Robovox, a speech synth used on some of the snarling vocoder vocals on the lead track, were built specifically.

Kling Klang especially would become home to many of these DIY creations (called things like the Synthanorma Sequenzer’) – many real, many more ‘legendary’ – helping to give the facility its hallowed status. It’s one thing using an old industrial unit to record in. It’s another filling it with gear that no one else had.

DEEP CUTS EXTRA: THE CONNY CONSOLE

Much of Conny Plank’s gear was sold off in 2007 and, of course, other items were custom built or modified by himself or engineers Peter Lang and Michael Zahl. One piece of gear that does live on though, is Plank’s 56 Channel Handmade Mixing Desk, and was used to mix Autobahn and many more classic albums from Ultravox!,

Eno and a string of other legends that came through Conny’s doors over the following couple of decades. Back in March 2018, we spoke to Conny’s son Stephan Plank and producer David M. Allen to discuss the console, which is now in London’s Studio 7. The interview reveals how the console was indeed used not only at Conny’s studio but, as we suggest above, in a mobile way to record parts of Autobahn at Kling Klang.

“One section of the desk was designed to split away from the main desk and be installed into his [Conny’s] customised recording van so he could drive it out and record on location. He did a lot of remote recording like this – it was instrumental to records like Autobahn by Kraftwerk.”

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