The Man Machine

Music made by men pretending to be robots for people who are pretending not to be robots. Overall my favourite Kraftwerk album

The way they take bleeps and bloops and infuse them with warmth and emotion is something else. Neon Lights is one of the most beautiful pieces of music.

beep boop

Welcome human! You request has been approved! Album review: "The Man Machine" by Kraftwerk PROCESSING... 10%... 60%... 100% REVIEW GENERATED! Algorithmic creativity, smoothly blending electronic beats with synthesised melodies to create a harmonious sonic experience. BEEP!

Great album. Still sounds surprisingly fresh and modern, highlighting how far ahead of their time kraftwerk were at the time of release.

When this first appeared it must have sounded like the most mental thing ever. The meticulous technical effort seems normal now, but still feels exciting.

It must have been wild to discover this album in 1978 - a bunch of German weirdos singing in robot voices about space lasers. Still listenable today. Best track: The Model

A classic which basically started electronic music. It sounds so futuristic and so hard to believe it’s from 1978

It hurts my head to imagine how alien this must have sounded in 1978. Like Arnie turning up naked and nicking a motorcycle, it must have been like the future had arrived.

Another album where I appreciate the historical value. A lot of the songs I appreciate, but the repetitive nature of it does get on my nerves after a little while. Little no variation in the lyrics (mostly the title of the song on repeat.) Perhaps it speaks more of my modern failing attention span, an ailment of the 21st century. It really struggles to hold my interest. Not something I would listen to on my own I don't think. It's nice to have given it a proper listen so I understand the historical context of electronic music a bit better.

Amazing. I can hear all of New Wave and Techno in their trailblazing synthesisers.

Love. This one is genuinely life changing for music.

I, for one, welcome our robotic overlords. Best Tracks: The Robots; Metropolis; The Model

OH YESSSS it's a wall to wall banger situation :) I love this album. It is so interesting, unusual, influential, beautiful, relaxing yet exciting, experimental, German, sexy, somehow still futuristic even though it's already very old! The model is a TUNE and it's one I often whip out on an open mic night with guitar cajon and vocals haha! I recently used The Robots in a school assembly (I'm a teacher) and can confirm the kids of today LOVE it, not a soul was sitting still. I love that it's not loads of songs! I just wonder what the price was when they released it in 1978 when people couldn't stream online, did they account for the short length by making it cheaper? I'm actually in love with Neon Lights. It's put me in a great mood despite a stressful day at work, that's a marker for 5 star perfection in my book.

More pop-oriented than any of their previous work, the sound of The Man-Machine -- in particular among Kraftwerk's oeuvre -- had a tremendous impact on the cold, robotic synth pop of artists like Gary Numan, as well as Britain's later new romantic movement.

Kraftwerk = les Daft punk du pauvre mais vous savez comme moi qu'il serait idiot de m'étaler sur cet album sans évoquer les événements récents. Comme vous le savez, la rivalité entre mon compagnon d'écoute elchavez et moi dépasse très largement le cadre de la musique. Celle-ci a connu un point de non-retour il y a quelques semaines. Vous savez probablement que je prends depuis plusieurs années un malin plaisir à sortir avec les conquêtes dudit elchavez. Le but poursuivi est le suivant : le mettre hors d'état de nuire. Alors que je rentrais justement d'un bar du centre-ville en compagnie de l'une de ses anciennes fréquentations, nous nous assîmes soudain sur les marches de la Poste Meriadeck. Cette dernière déclara d'une voix blafarde : "Robcremière, je dois t'avouer quelque chose : j'adore les Crusaders ainsi que Hugh Masekela." Pas besoin d'en rajouter, nos langues s'entremêlaient bientôt dans un tourbillon inarrêtable. Après une vingtaine de minutes, celle-ci m'annonça soudain : "Robcremière, tu embrasses beaucoup mieux qu'elchavez. De plus, ta connaissance de la musique lui est nettement supérieure." J'acquiesçai brièvement et nous nous galochâmes ensuite avec encore plus de vigueur. Dans le même temps, on pouvait entendre les encouragements de certains passants : "Bien fait pour elchavez !", "Il l'a bien mérité !", "À mort elchavez, l'homme qui ne donne jamais plus de 4 !", etc... Le lendemain, j'envoyai une lettre recommandée à ce dernier dans laquelle je lui exposais les faits dans leur intégralité. Une bataille de plus remportée par Robcremière.

Is it cool that this came out in the 70s - yes Did I enjoy listing to this - no

An excellent album, which still sounds like the future, despite being released over 40 years ago. Standout track is Neon Lights - it’s almost-waltz like time signature somehow only serves to make it sound even more futuristic. Everyone should own this album.

Very unique. It blows my mind that such a refined and crisp electronic, synthy sound was possible in 1978.

Beep boop this music is made by computers. I am a human, therefore I do not understand it.

Um uhh stop beeping at me

Thanks, I hate it.

Not it

Ja! Das ist die Autobahn!

Jaa, Kraftwerk. Die wahren Elektropioniere. Natürlich habe ich mir das bahnbrechende Album im deutschen Original angehört. Und daher gibt es auch einen deutschen Komentar. Großartig.

Can't believe it took me this long to listen to Kraftwerk. Absolutely timeless. Their influence can be heard everywhere. Will probably add a few songs from this album to my running playlist.

Ugh

Super weird Euro music

"She's a model and she's looking good. I'd like to take her home it's understood". SMSLGIL2THHIU. That's the new password for this group. Memorize it.

Kind of boring.

Was waiting for it to finish from the first track

These Kraftwerk records feel liked they’re tapped from a private little universe that’s utterly personal, romantic, and difficult to imagine in any other form, a music expressed in gestures with the simplicity and honesty of a vivid dream. Swooningly perfect.

Love this. I have awarded the prestigious "best Kraftwerk album" award elsewhere, but this is damn close. Beautiful, precise tunes that sound so warm despite their robotic intent. "Spacelab" in particular reminds me of an old world where technological advances were sought for the improvement of humanity, not attained for the sole purpose of enabling malign, pale, weak-chinned autists to enrich themselves at humanity's expense. But I digress (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9dmoT9AfoI).. Bonus points if you listen to the German version, which is slightly different and not just in the vocals. "Die Roboter" is especially banging!

Superb sounds and melodies. I listened to the German version.

What is there left to say about this stunningly influential album?

Another future classic from the 70s. Silky smooth electronica for the autopeople.

Still sounds like music from another world. My art teacher used to play this over & over at school. I was rubbish at art but it was great to hear this. The Model hasn’t aged, stunning. Neon Lights is something else, warm & emotional. Absolutely ridiculous this is over 40 years old. I’m reading Carl Cox’s autobiography and he dedicates a whole chapter to Kraftwerk. It’s wondrous, magical music. It makes you feel different to any other music, unique in that way.

Never realized how much of a foundation Kraftwerk laid for electronic music and robot pop.

This is a great album, perfect from front to back. I love all of Kraftwerk’s albums, but this one is to my mind a perfectly executed album, probably the best introduction to the band for a new listener. The songs flow beautifully into each other and tonally they all work well together. It’s such a smooth listen. Half these songs clock in over 6 minutes and you don't even feel it really. There isn’t a bad song here as far as I’m concerned. I also feel like over time this album has really aged well. Back then, it was highly futuristic. Now it’s simply a classic, a necessary touchpoint for anyone with an interest in electronic music. The compositions are tight, crisp, melodic and spare. The vocals are limited, either sung directly by Ralf Hütter, or vocalizations processed through machines. I know not everyone is a fan of the songs with vocals, but I happen to like them a lot and I think they’re central to the whole “Man Machine” concept in Kraftwerk’s music. When you hear a song like “The Model” or “Neon Lights,” it’s Hütter’s vocals that provide that surprising warmth and pathos. Without it, all you have is the machine. It’s an idea both in music and in life that’s still pretty timely when you think about it. Fave Songs: Neon Lights (it’s so very good, possibly their best song ever), The Robots, The Model. I mean really, all of them.

I can hear where Daft punk and a lot of other electronic artists were influenced by these dudes.

Connor: I loved this album! It's catchy, danceable, and yet certain songs - especially The Model - seem to have a dark, cold undercurrent that make me feel lonely

"Die Mensch-Maschine": a perfect distillation of the record. So much of the future is in these songs, especially the future of electronic music. Yet there's physicality, even humanity, in every beat. It's the soundtrack of a cyberpunk world we never got. That might be good, of course: The music is more challenging than the titular phrase, and that lost future has problems we moderns don't have to face. Practically, moving to these rhythms works, but feels less than freeing. For other electronic music, that might be a flaw. Here, though, it feels like The Point.

a la Tron Legacy electro-techno

Daft Punk из 70х со звуками из советских фильмов, который звучит стильно и по сей день. Альбом The Man Machine выходил в том же 1978 году и на родном для группы немецком языке (Die Mensch-Maschine), но я все же выбрал для прослушивания издание на английском языке. Он состоит из 6 достаточно продолжительных песен в стиле электропоп, что делает альбом длинным (36 минут), несмотря на количество песен. Каждая из шести песен хорошо запоминается , на это влияет как репетативность мелодии и роботического/человеческого голоса в стиле более известной французской хаус группы 90х Daft Punk, так и качество и уникальность инструментала и атмосферы каждого трека. Заглавная песня The Robots своими строчками «We are the robots» напоминает «We are animals» из песни группы Nazareth - Animals. Своим мотивом она погружает в атмосферу и сеттинг альбома с первых звуков синтезатора, к тому же в песнях достаточно редко (тем более в припевах) встречается русская речь, здесь она играет достаточно важную роль для всего альбома. Песня The Model стала хитом группы, ее резвый ритм отличается от остального альбома, и слушатель в этот момент будто погружается в другую, одновременно отстраненную от остальных треков историю, но все же схожую по концепту. Великолепная Neon Lights показалась мне самой красивой среди всех песен, словно вчерашние роботы обрели живые чувства и выдали прекрасный шедевр, который как раз подходит под прогулку по ночному городу. В заключении хочется похвалить альбом за то, что такой хороший уровень музыки на нем я изначально не ожидал, этот альбом действительно надо послушать хоть раз в своей жизни, но рука не тянется поставить пять звезд. Уж больно много аналогов Kraftwerk за это время накопилось в мире, и тех же Daft Punk можно считать улучшенной версией немецкой группы, ведь они и по сей день слушаются круто. тВоЙ сЛуГа И рАбОтНиК ставит 4/5

🤖

For electronic music this is a surprisingly pleasant listen. But like everything in this genre, I find myself asking, "What's this the soundtrack for?"

After 3 Kraftwerk records I can confidently say this is a very important band that I don't enjoy listening to

i like daft punk and i like this but god is it just so boring, three is the highest i can rate this without feeling bad about myself, i wish the whole thing was as funky as i know it has the power to be and was at times

It’s ok, a little outdated but I can tell that it was groundbreaking at the time Fav song: the man-machine

Exceptionally weird. Exceptionally cool.

Bso

Never was a fan of this type of electronica.

Les sonorités de cet album me sont apparues fort désagréables. Où sont passés la rigueur et le pragmatisme allemand au moment de concevoir ce navet de musique electronique? Je me souviens d'un temps où les studios allemands étaient un exemple d'organisation, les micros étant bien alignés, les tables de mix en ordre de marche, on ne décelait aucun bruit parasite, seule la voix de l'ingénieur son rythmant ce balais de production sonore. Ce temps semble désormais bien loin, il serait bon de redonner à l'Allemagne sa gloire d'antan.

Nah

just not my thing

When the robots take over our world, they will throw a big party & allow us to join in the celebration. There will be a huge area (a sign will read Humans Allowed) with colored lights, beverages, pizza & the music on this album will be playing as the robots encourage us to dance as humans dancing greatly amuses them. I suggest you dance I know I will.

Proper Good Album this like

5 ⭐

I feel that one day in the early 90s a couple of french DJs stumbled upon this album and decided to crib its entire aesthetic and thus Daft Punk were born. Proto-roborock never sounded so good or so human.

Masterpiece. Space lab goated

I loved this. It was new to me. Definitely on my shopping list now.

Awesome!

Sometimes you feel like you want to rate albums higher than they maybe deserve just for the history, but then I hear the pulsing, drilling opening riff to "The Robots" and I'm already losing my mind and shimmying my shoulders a little bit. Everyone who says "Kraftwerk invented techno" is wrong, but the DNA for most of the electronic music that came after that I love is all here. But in a way, the history doesn't matter. This album fucking slaps on its own and always will.

Fantastic album.

If this was music of today, I would not listen to this at all (well maybe I would), but this was original sounding when it came out and I LOVED IT then, still do. The simplistic honest emotional expressionism is pure and unadulterated. Eternal classic. 5 stars

Early german techno? Yes please. Great soundtrack for sauerkraut making.

Even better than I remember. I could see this being more influential than Trans-Europe Express but still like that one more Rating: 4.7

Beep-boop I can get behind! Peak culture is insisting on calling them Powerplant when listening to the English version.

Oh, so you can make an electronic album that is not at least an hour long? Sehr gut, Kraftwerk. Sehr gut.

I love this album. Fun and familiar.

Familiar sounds, I enjoyed the warmth. The sort of noises I like to make.

I'm obsessed.

This is just plain good music with its attractive early electronics charm. This was ground-breaking in 1978 and totally deserves to be in the "must hear" list. I don't just love the music itself, but Kraftwerk comes with a whole aesthetic, from the album cover to the band's appearance and stage performance. I like that. When listening to older (non classical) music, I always wonder whether I only like it in its context (i.e. as a famous album from the '70s) or where I would equally love it if it came out in 2025 and from an unknown band. I don't know, maybe not. But context counts. Liked all the songs, Neon Lights the least. Still a 5 for me.

What’s not to say about Kraftwerk?! This legendary band does NOT disappoint. They have one of the most original sounds of all time and nearly 50years later, no one sounds like them. Yes they sound alittle stereotypical for electronic music but that because they literally created the genre. And this album is probably their most popular album. Super atmospheric and entrancing, this album will have your brain going on a sci-fi adventure across the future with robots and huge neon cities. This is not my favorite album by them but it’s definitely the most accessible. And we are all thinking it so I’ll just say it. Anyone who doesn’t enjoy this album doesn’t know how to have fun.

Ok, it’s getting a 5. I’ve listened to it multiple times so that says something. Definitely ahead of its time and so influential, there is something compelling about it

🖤❤️🤍🖤❤️🤍 Absolutely brilliant!

Synthesizer greatest! Ik vind het leuk. Lekker relaxt. Lekker melodieus. Heerlijk!! Kun je je voorstellen dat dit album in de jaren '70 gemaakt is? *****

Very different from my usual mix. I enjoyed it a lot

Only 6 tracks, give me more!!

Sure, it's just beeps and boops, but everything just works. Having a sound this crisp and coordinated on such an early electronic album is incredible. The tracks flow into one another, and the album is fairly short so nothing ever sounds tired.

Seminal piece of electronica.

Fantastic album. Just what I needed.

good! 5/5

What a classic run of incredible albums. Still sounds fresh today. Always choose the German versions when listening which sometimes masks the silly lyrics.

Kraftwerk hat mein deutsches Herz

fine start, but in my opinion really picks up towards the middle and the end

So great. So fun and interesting and funky! Good background music that you want to groove to.

cute robot sounds i really like it unexpectedly

Awesome Project. As a piece of groundbreaking art, this thing succeeds and as a danceable, fun piece of music it also succeeds. We are the robots is a fantastic opener and it never loses any momentum. Neon lights is a fantastic techno ballad. The model is probably the most human song on here and if you removed the electronic elements and replaced it with rock instrumentation it probably would have charted in England. The last song is a great closer and the vocal modifications might be played out now, but it fits with the track. I was expecting something cold and soulless. With ai and the pervasive voice of tiktok and siri, I was expecting to dread this album. Instead, it's an incredibly warm and kinetic album. It feels calculated but not in an accountant way, it feels precise in the same way that a bird flaps its wings or cells divide. It feels natural, and it's endlessly refreshing. In the 50 or so years since this album was released, I think that the role of the robot in society and music has changed a lot. Fears of robot surveillance is constant, with hysteria around drones in the sky while we also invite robots into our houses on apps on our phones and smart toilets that can give you insights on your health based on your poops. You can feel the optimism on this album. Robots aren't enemies or weapons. They are babies, they have a lot to learn about the world, and at least at that moment, in 1976, their only limit was the imagination.

I love this album in all its forms, and its one of the few albums I think is vastly improved by a remaster. You can talk all day about Kraftwerk and how they invented an entirely new genre, but that's been said a billion times. The whole album not only defines a new musical genre and influenced countless future electronic and pop acts, but it practically created an aesthetic beyond music. When you think of retro future, the soundtrack is this. The post "atomic" space age, transistor based robotics, synthesized assistant voices, everything of that style owes so much to this album. I think every track is good, but my favorite is "Spacelab". I put it on nearly every quiet/ambient playlist I make. Using it as a seed to tweak various algorithmically generated playlists usually results in something good. I'm not entirely sure what it is about it but it speaks to me. There are lots of other Kraftwerk songs I like on other albums but this might be the only one I can go all the way through every time. Not a single thing I don't like about it.

My first taste of Kraftwerk. You can see how much they influenced the synthpop artists that followed them and since I love those artists, not too surprising that I love this. Even with several 6+ minute songs, I was never bored. Favorites: Metropolis, The Model, Neon Lights, The Man Machine Would I listen to it again?: Yes

One of my all time favourite albums from the pioneers of electronic/techno music. Futuristic and probably one of the most accessible Kraftwerk albums. The model was a hit single in the UK. This album influenced many of the new wave/new romantic acts including Human League, Gary Newman, Bowie etc...One of the many highlights is the eerily beautiful Neon Lights. Magnificent Machine Muzik. 5 stars.

Daft Punk, eat your heart out.

While not my favourite, it’s still a dance floor banger!

So-so

5 stars

So excited to see Kraftwerk show up for my album today. I'm not familiar with this one (Tour de France is my favorite) but still solid. Starting my commute to work The Robots was surreal, imagining what the future could be like.

Wow, um, kind of…melodic for these guys? And storytelling? And emotional? Anyhow, enjoyable throughout, well worthy of their canon, but some surprises to keep you guessing.

Fantastic stuff. Continued listening to more Kraftwerk immediately after, which is a sure sign of an easy five for me. Edit: listened to it all day at work and now I think I am becoming a robot 🤖

First off, I think the music in this absolutely slaps. I only really know Kraftwerk from Autobahn, and this isn’t exactly different, but I loved the whole aesthetic alongside it. As well as being hilariously space age and synthy, it also plays at being totally serious about its content and I just love that. I love a German accent and a Russian language breakdown. I love the idea of music made by robots. I love that the cover is clearly trying to make you think about old Russian propaganda posters, and the sense that this is sort of about the Cold War, but also sort of a big joke about a dystopian world from a silent film. I particularly liked Spacelab for being quite haunting- I think that’s a theremin in there, and the drum machine reminds me of a zoetrope spinning different photographs round. I thought The Model was super fun too, particularly for its stilted English- interesting also that this one sort of adds to the world while not being explicitly about, like, technology: “she’s posing for consumer products now and then” feels like it’s sung by the robots from the opening track. I think I might have heard Neon Lights before, but it’s possibly the one I connected with least- it felt the simplest and most romantic, which wasn’t really what I was in the mood for after single word tracks with heavy beats and beeps. Great beefy breakdown though, which made me think about twinkly lights in the city. The Man Machine is obviously a great closing track, and kind of felt like the most influential track, maybe- if someone released this now it would sound like a lot of electronica, and I think that’s because everyone cites Kraftwerk. When you think about music that sounds like the future, it sounds like Kraftwerk, and even though The Man Machine is from the 70s, our ideas about the future don’t seem to have moved on that much. Here’s my lofty conclusion, because you know you wanted one, Fi: is the reason “futuristic music” hasn’t moved on because we no longer imagine ourselves to have a future? Arguably we’ve met Kraftwerk’s fantasy already- robots and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis realised in countries that even in the 70s were largely desert. Have we lost all optimism about the future in the face of climate change? Was the technology they’re imagining, which I’m calling dystopian, once seen as a move forward, and in the age of AI it’s lost its shine? Anyway I loved this and will put it on in the car and while drunk. Four and a half for being short (and sort of because of Neon Lights), rounded to a five.