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’.
I’ll be spinning for a couple of hours down at Rat Records in Camberwell, SE5 on April 21st for Record Store Day to celebrate the release of my remix 12″ with The Amorphous Androgynous. I should be bringing a box of 12″s for the occasion and I’ll try and rustle up the last copies of the limited CD/comic/flexi disc version of ‘The Search Engine’ album too. There will also be in store sets and appearances from DJ Andy Smith, Julia Finnimore and Serafina Steer – god knows where everyone is going to go as the shop isn’t huge.
Rat Records is a small but perfectly formed used record store nestled in the heart of Camberwell, close to where I live and a place I’ve lived around most of the two decades plus that I’ve been in London. They are also one of the only used record stores South of the river, along with the Record & Tape Exchange in Greenwich and Soul Brother in Putney, so they don’t benefit from the passing trade of the Soho stores.Because they are a used store they don’t have the ordering power to get new RSD product like the shops that sell new releases but I want to support them as they always make an effort for RSD. My good friend David Vallade has, once again, produced a poster for the occasion – nice touch with my character there :). Not sure exactly what time I’m be playing but it will be a 2 hour selection around midday.
Rare sleeves for ‘The Model’ 7″: top – Japan, middle – Germany, bottom – France.
The lyrics for the song on the back of the Japanese sleeve contain some interesting turns of phrase:
“She plays hot to get smart, from time to time”,
“and she has been checking nearly all the land”
and the classic,
“She’s posing for consumer bought a town and then”.
Steve Cook over at Secret Oranges has had something put in his coffee I think, several blinding psychedelic posts today alone…
I found these today whilst looking on the Hang Up Pictures blog, art and ideas executed on this scale never fail to take my breath away. The top one is by MAMBO – how did they get that shot? Camera on a balloon / helicopter? The middle is by JR at the Galerie Perrotin in Paris and the bottom is by ARYZ, painted in Finland.
From one of the illustrations in his book, ‘Broadcast’, comes this gem, ‘Hide From The Monster’ – a three colour print made for Pick Me Up London at Somerset House. I think you have to actually go there to get one and I don’t know how much it is but there’s a lot of good art on display from what I’ve seen online.
UPDATE: It’s seems it’s £50 in an edition of 20
David Basgalla has created a set of desktop icons, based on the bands’ artwork, available for free download on the iconfactory
Bernard B has designed a font family in tribute to the band called Kling Klang, whilst not actually appearing on any Kraftwerk sleeves you can see where he got his inspiration from. Available to buy over at MyFonts.
Finally, there have been several font sets created over the years, emulating classic album sleeve typography too, as well as a couple of dingbat sets. These are archived on the now defunct technopop site which is a wealth of Kraftwerk-related media and a great source of info on the band. Also see the KEEP werking site.
