Computer World

1981年発売作品。現在を見越したかのような、コンピューター社会をテーマにしたコンセプト・アルバム。収録曲「ポケット・カルキュレーター」での日本語歌詞が話題に。16ページのブックレット付。
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Alternative Press - Included in AP's "10 Essential '80s Albums" - "...A concept album...a huge influence on Detroit techno's elite producers..." Q - 5 Stars - Indispensable - "...their best LP to date. A celebration/valediction of information technology, it flickers with hooks..." Q - 5 stars out of 5 -- "[With] a sense of everything sound beautifully nocturnal."

By the 1980s, the world had at least somewhat caught up with Kraftwerk's chilling musical vision. Synthesizers were everywhere, and the automation of music was developing with alarming speed. As pioneers of the genre, Kraftwerk was hitting its stride as the rest of the pop music world was taking its baby steps. 1981's COMPUTER WORLD serves as an ominous reflection of our evolving technological world, and it's a seminal influence on electronic music to come. Kraftwerk's music had always been completely based in technology, all the while reflecting a healthy fear of global automation. This album met that fear head on, from the plaintive musical theme and lonesome Everyman protagonism of "Computer Love" to the chilling "Home Computer", which foretells the PC revolution via the group's trademark marriage of relentless, melodic electronic music and stark, touching human imagery. Other landmark compositions include the infectious, oft-sampled "Numbers" and "Pocket Calculator", a cut which stands out even on this album as a milestone in quirky, Teutonic synth-pop.|

The last great Kraftwerk album, Computer World captured the band right at the moment when its pioneering approach fully broke through in popular music, thanks to the rise of synth pop, hip-hop, and electro. As Arthur Baker sampled "Trans-Europe Express" for "Planet Rock" and disciples like Depeche Mode, OMD, and Gary Numan scored major hits, Computer World demonstrated that the old masters still had some last tricks up their collective sleeves. Compared to earlier albums, it fell readily in line with The Man-Machine, eschewing side-long efforts but with even more of an emphasis on shorter tracks mixed with longer but not epic compositions. While the well-established tropes of the band were used again -- electronically treated vocals, some provided by Speak and Spell toys; crisp rhythm blips; basslines and beats; haunting, quirky melodies -- there's a ready liveliness to the songs, like the addictive "Pocket Calculator," with its perfectly deadpan portrait of "the operator" and his favorite tool, and the almost winsome "Computer Love." Cannily, the lyrical focus on newly accessible technology instead of cryptic futurism and vanished pasts matched this new of-the-now stance, and the result was a perfect balance between the new world of the album title and a withdrawn, bemused consideration of that world. The title track itself, with its lists detailing major organizations presumably all wired up, echoes the flow of Trans-Europe Express, serene and pondering. "Pocket Calculator" itself is more outrageously fun, thanks to the technical observation that "by pressing down a special key it plays a little melody." Others would take the band's advances and run with them, but with Computer World Kraftwerk -- over a decade on from their start -- demonstrated how they had stayed not merely relevant, but prescient, when nearly all their contemporaries had long since burned out. ~ Ned Raggett