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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mix-ed Emotions . . ., 9 Aug 2003
First off, this is NOT a remix album. I recall Ralf Hutter pointing out to a tin-eared journalist that these were, indeed, brand NEW recordings. It seems a pointless exercise (the originals were perfectly fine) but consider this: the world had gone Madchester/dance remix crazy, Kraftwerk were due a greatest hits, they were hitting the road, the march of technology (and the exit of Bartos/Flur) meant the old hits sounded different when they played them now . . . So why release a collection of old singles when they could go in and lay down their live set circa 1991? Let’s face, they needed to programme the sequencers for the gigs anyway . . . And so in a perverse way that’s what The Mix is: Kraftwerk live. Just they didn’t record it live. Unfortunately, any artist who plays a song too long is bound to ruin it out of boredom. And so the re-recording of Trans-Europe Express becomes a dirge and Computer Love goes from being their most touching love song (their only love song?) to a silly, inappropriate slab of hand-bag house. As for The Robots, you half expect a tinny voice to sing out "For mash get Smash!" and dissolve into giggles (readers of a certain age will get the reference). But in fairness, Autobahn, Pocket Calculator and Home Computer sound pretty nifty IF you’ve yet to sample the originals (Pocket Calculator hits a great groove when it segues into Dentaku, and Home Computer pulls in the slack by incorporating the sound-alike More Fun To Compute). Music Non-Stop was intended as a dance track so it’s no great sacrilege to make it even more danceable by boosting the bass and intercutting Boing Boom Tschak. But what makes the album an essential purchase for fans is the absolutely blinding re-working of Radioactivity, the lyric turned anti-nuclear, the song played at twice the speed, and the wistful vocal now undercut by a blank robotic chant over a thundering beat, at once chill and energizing. Which is arguably the essence of Kraftwerk. Of course, the usual caveat remains (“Don’t by this until you have Trans-Europe Express, The Man Machine, Computer World . . .” etc), and I personally miss Bartos and Flurs’ tight, minimal rhythms. And, hey, since these are live arrangements, why not record them live (live acoustics renders a new, more powerful dimension to the Kraftwerk sound)? But judged on its own terms, The Mix is still a pretty good album and has worn better than most from that era.
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