To finish the month off here’s something that’s been in the pipeline for over a year – KKK vol.7. This took far too long to do and I completely redid the start three times before I was happy with it.
I already have over three and a half hours worth of tracks mapped out for vol.8, which will concentrate more on piano and jazz versions but I’ll let the dust settle for a bit as you can have too much of something. Thanks for all the suggestions and links to tracks or versions, some of them even made it onto this mix.
A quick word on the multitude of cover versions – the images below are just a few of the whole albums dedicated to Kraftwerk covers available, let alone all the single tracks scattered about various artists’ discographies. Every time I do a Kover Kollection, and use the web to research the tracks I’ve used, I find even more out there.
As with all covers, there are more misses than hits, although the Senor Coconut album does deserve singling out as a work of genius. Another that I recently acquired is the Mencshmachine ‘Hand Werk’ CD from Germany, an excellent album of jazz-based covers with a twist in the tail. Unlisted on the CD, and hidden after 10 minutes of silence once the last track has finished, is one of the most sublime covers I’ve yet to hear – the track ‘Spacelab’ from the ‘Man Machine’ album. It’s not on the web that I can find but the band have several tracks on their soundcloud page and I’ll be putting more of their music into the KKK8 mix, which will be better suited to their sound, more acoustic than electronic.
Before I sign off I’d like to thank everyone who’s logged on, checked out the daily content and listened to the mixes. It seems it all went a bit viral around the third week and made Metafilter, with volume 3 clocking up over 50,000 plays!
Not heard the remixes on this yet but there’s an limited pre-order deal on where you can order this with the new Deckard 7″ for €15.
Mine and Yppah‘s mix from last night’s Solid Steel – without chat, you can listen to me and Jon fluff our lines over on StrongroomAlive if you want. Yppah’s mix contains tracks all released in 1981, and, coincidentally, ends with Kraftwerk’s ‘Computer World’ before we get a taste of half of the Kraftwerk Kover Kollection vol.7 which debuts here tomorrow in full.
This unrelated, non-Corbijn bonus photo too because I love it:
[youtube width=”640″ height=”450″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFEm4R8Ac4g&feature=BFa&list=PL3F8822D16A24AAE2&lf=plcp[/youtube]
[youtube width=”640″ height=”450″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWazkdpt8j4&feature=share[/youtube]
There will be a preview of some of KKK7 tonight on Solid Steel between 7-9pm (GMT) on Strongroom Alive. I’ll be joining Jon More from Coldcut and we’ll have a mix from Yppah focussing on the vintage music year of 1981 – his new album title – and a competition to win a copy too.
The month is nearly up and there’s still so much that could be posted.
In 1981, BBC Radio 1 DJ Tommy Vance saw Kraftwerk play the opening night of their ‘Computer World’ tour in Manchester, England. Afterwards he interviewed Ralf Hutter for his Friday Rock Show and managed to get quite a revealing response, including some uncharacteristic humour. I’ve edited out the music as tastefully as I can and cleaned up the audio but the quality isn’t great to begin with.
Rare European 7″ sleeves for the singles ‘Kometemelodie 1’ and ‘Kometemelodie 2’.
My friend Toby found these in his parents’ house, a beautiful box set of original Moonmin books.
No.2 in an occasional series…
The legendary 12″ of ‘Neon Lights’ issued in the UK on luminous vinyl in 1978, backed with ‘Trans Europe Express’ and ‘The Model’. This copy was given to me recently by Steve Cook who’d had it tucked away in his collection for decades, hardly played. You can see what great condition it’s in and he’s even kept the price sticker on – £1.49 from Allders of Croydon – that wouldn’t even get you two downloads these days let alone a beautiful item like this. I tried to test how luminous it was and photograph it in the dark but had no joy, I like how you can see little bits of grit in the vinyl too where it wasn’t entirely pure. Thanks Steve!
I’ve been told that Ninja have pressed another 500 copies of this 12″ because demand has been high already. That makes 1500 copies for Record Store Day on multi-coloured vinyl and they have reserved 200 copies for the Ninjashop. I’ll post the link to buy or pre-order when it’s up.
Detail from a forthcoming post and the origin of one of the track titles from ‘The Search Engine’. I seem to be one of the few people I know who actually likes Mondays, the week sprawls ahead with all the promise of untold creations emerging before the weekend is upon us.
These have both been up for some time but just to make the whole month complete I thought I’d highlight them with artwork once again. Vol.5 first appeared on 14/12/07 and Vol.6 on 13/11/09.
Absolutely love this video, parts of the new Paul Weller album, ‘Sonik Kicks’ aren’t bad at all either, see the video for ‘Green’ below too.
Rare European 7″ sleeves for ‘Showroom Dummies’ singles, note the reversed image from the ‘Trans Europe Express’ album on the top left
With original copies of the ‘Ralf & Florian’ album there was an 8-page insert by friend of the band Emil Schult. Schult designed a lot of their sleeves in the seventies and also wrote lyrics to some songs, including ‘The Model’.