Autobahn

Today I will let the music do most of the talking. This song was recorded in 1974 (!), and yes, it is a long one, but it is well worth listening to. It is easy to hear the cars passing by, and with musical elements switching between harmony and some disharmony, it is always interesting. Although Kraftwerk had released three albums already (Kraftwerk, Kraftwerk II, and Ralf und Florian), Autobahn was where they really started coming into their own - and creating something uniquely new. Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger, who had been working with the band in the early 70s had left to form Neu!, and while there were other collaborators on the album Autobahn, the title track only featured the two core members in Kraftwerk: Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider (only Hütter still remains after Schneider left in 2008). It is a 22 minute long track that really takes you along the German expressways (autobahns) - and I can't believe that it is 44 years old. This was in the infancy of synthesizers, but what they were able to do simply blows me away!