Tour de France Soundtracks

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Editorial reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review
With Kraftwerk now rumoured to be far more fascinated by bicycles than keyboards, it's perhaps not surprising that ITour De France Soundtracks/I is the group's first album for 12 years. Continuing to explore the theme of movement, men and machines that spawned the marvellous IAutobahn/I, ITrans-Europe Express/I and 1983's landmark single "Tour De France", ISoundtracks/I is basically an expanded version of the latter, right down to the cover art. p Having inspired house, trance and techno, it seems fair that Kraftwerk should borrow something in return. Commencing with three segueing versions of the title track, ISoundtracks/I opens with a fine 15-minute dose of tranquil minimalist trance before seamlessly gliding through various sonic soundscapes with a metronome-like rhythm. Mellifluous keyboard lines evoke the sense of motion while melodies weave and swirl. "Elektro Kardiogramm" goes as far as containing heartbeat and breathing effects while "Vitamin", the album's peak, could be described as the Pyrenean stage with its deep grooves and dizzying synth hooks. The sound of groundbreakers building bridges, ITour De France Soundtracks/I may not prove as hugely influential as Kraftwerk's early music, but it is nevertheless a winning return. I--Christopher Barrett/I

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Customer reviews

review by: alan.808 date: 2009-07-01 rating:
alan.808
one of the best albums I have ever bought. its constantly being played in my car after 6 weeks

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review by: date: 2009-06-07 rating:
Just what I wanted
I was recomended this CD for turbo training music, I have found that is just what I wanted and can only recomend it if you do turbo training.

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review by: date: 2009-05-16 rating:
Sophistication is the key...
Still sounding as modern as ever, the original single of Tour de France makes its way on Kraftwerks 2003 album 'Soundtracks', a follow up to the original single. So why is it one of my favorite albums ever? br / br /Typically of their man-machine curiosity, this album breaks the regular boundaries of how an album should sound upon it's first play. The layout creates a story for the cycling event, spilt up by retro sounding cuts that are as fat sounding as they were in the 1980's, typically of analogue equipment. Yet in slick fashion, the speed and rush of the sport is captured in a 130+ bpm speed, giving it an almost progressive-house nature. br / br /Etapes Part 1 to 3 start the album as one long cut, almost in the nature Autobahn. Various tracks in the meanwhile capture the spirit of the race; Vitamin bringing things down to a calmer nature as we re-fuel, while the emphatic La Forme builds up to a massive ending with Regeneration, a dreamy melodic number that precedes Tour de France. br / br /I decided out of curiosity to read the negative reviews first, and wasn't surprised to see numerous comments highlighting the 'boring' nature of this album. What I hope potential buyers can understand is the sophistication of the music included, and that to get your head around the way it's been recorded, you must open your mind and stop thinking about the way an album 'should' sound.

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review by: date: 2008-09-25 rating:
Merckx in 1976
Different audiences, different needs. The long-term Kraftwerk fan, who sat on the edge of their seat for decades waiting for this album to appear, will respond in a different way to the casual listener exploring Kraftwerk albums out of sequence. I'll try to cover both bases, but the casual listener needs a review more so it's to them, primarily, that I'll be talking. br / br /For the long-term fans this came as something of a disappointment: a long wait ended by an album hailed as underwhelming, with the final insult being the presence of a new version of the old "Tour de France" single from years ago. I think this sells the album short: the many years' wait before it came out built up expectations that it would be impossible to meet, but if you set these to one side it's a solid and enjoyable piece of work. br / br /Those who've explored other Kraftwerk albums will find the pattern familiar: a set of linked pieces representing different treatments of recurring musical themes, all linked to a particular topic. In this case of course the overarching subject is the Tour de France, and as ever tracks elide into each other as the different aspects of particular musical themes are explored: at the start of the album, for example, the 30 second "Prologue" - a few hanging synth notes without rhythm - leads into "Tour de France Étapes 1-3" (Étape meaning Stage) and "Chrono", all four tracks using the same basic rhythm track. Other linked tracks occur elsewhere - for instance, "La Forme / Régéneration". Stylistically, there's no major departure - there's no acoustic guitar, for instance! - although there are some slightly new elements. There's an awareness of developments in electronic music while they were away: the opening suite of tracks, for example, makes use of the synthetic hi-hat cymbal on the off-beat characteristic of late 80s House music. Lyrics are chiefly in French - appropriately so - and in general heavily treated, giving the impression of a machine speaking, or a voice heard over a primitive radio. There's an overriding story arc to the album, with the opening suite painting sound pictures of the Tour; succeeding tracks taking as their subject time-trials or nutrition, for instance; the final linked suite providing warm-down music for the end of a stage; and then the rerecorded "Tour de France" single wrapping the whole thing up by recapping in 3 minutes. br / br /Above, I talked about different audiences and divided them into different types of Kraftwerk fan. You could, equally, divide the potential audience into cyclists and non-cyclists. For cyclists, whether Kraftwerk fans or not, I'd recommend this highly: the opening suite in particular paints a very vivid sound picture of preparation, getting up to speed then driving on pushing the pace with brief breaks to freewheel at corners. As a soundtrack to the Tour de France it succeeds very well, and can turn a few miles' commute in suburbia into a fast stage across la France Profonde. br / br /There's a fine film, "A Sunday in Hell", which tells the story of the 1976 Paris-Roubaix race (for non-cyclists, this is a one-day classic race from Paris to the Belgian border, known as "The Hell of the North" for the demands it puts on the riders: Kraftwerk name-check it in the lyrics to the final track). In spring 1976 the great Eddie Merckx was past his peak; although no-one knew it, he had won his last classic and would retire a couple of years later. At this stage he's still, however, a menacing impassive presence in the peloton (the Man-Machine, indeed) and when what turns out to be the winning breakaway takes place all eyes are on him to see how he'll respond. There's a pause, then he pushes the pace up, but he can't make a dent in the lead and the peloton swallows him up again. This is probably how we have to see Kraftwerk now. Clearly giants of the genre, but they're no longer way out in front, and it would be unreasonable to expect them to be: in this album we can see them using motifs from younger artists' work, and see that they're no longer writing the rules, no longer setting the pace. But, even if they're now back in the peloton, they're still near the front of it, still worthy of respect from their peers, and still performing at a level well above that of ordinary mortals. This is not going to rewrite the rule-book in the way "Autobahn" did all those years ago; but it's a solid piece of work you can enjoy and, if you're a cyclist, put on your internal iPod to drive you along on those cold wet mornings. br /


review by: date: 2008-03-19 rating:
Nipple to the bottle
This is a sad record. Kraftwerk released almost no new music from 1986 right until 2003, during which time the media assumed that the band was obsessively working on a perfectionist masterpiece. The reality is that Kraftwerk ran out of ideas in 1981, coasted on technique for their 1986 LP Electric Cafe, and spent the next seventeen years going to the cinema, shopping, talking on the telephone, living their lives like normal people. Tour De France Soundtracks is the aural equivalent of an old university friend who you have not seen for a long time. You ask him what he has been up to, and he shrugs and says that the years passed quickly and he cannot remember. You realise that you are the same as him, you have achieved less in twenty years than you used to achieve in a single day, back when you were young. You have more money now, but nothing to spend it on. br / br /The record gets off to a poor start. "Prologue", "Etappe" and "Chrono" are really parts of one long track, which I shall call Fred. Fred has a melody that seems uncomfortably close to "Computer World", but it's no Jack Kennedy. In fact the whole composition is a dead loss. It's pleasant, but tedious; the overall sound is very smooth and dull. There isn't enough musical material to fill all those minutes. The production is no more advanced than typical dance pop music, and it is years behind Squarepusher. There was a time when Kraftwerk could rely on their electronic production skills to patch over a lack of musical ideas, but Tour De France Soundtracks has none of that. The drums are perfunctory and the electronic beeps could have been squeezed out by anybody. There are some phased strings here and there, but the Kraftwerk sound has been diluted to nothing. br / br /"Vitamin" is an improvement. It's a simple and hypnotic four-minute pop single. Unfortunately it is eight minutes long, it seems to stop half-way through and start again from the beginning. If I wanted to listen to "Vitamin" twice in a row, which I do not, I would play the track twice. I don't need Kraftwerk to do it for me. br / br /"Aero Dynamik / Titanium" are one long track, which sounds like a pygmy version of "Pocket Calculator". It's the most Kraftwerk-sounding song on the record, on account of a strings noise that reminds me of the last half of "Trans Europe Express", but on a musical level it's just filler. "Elektro Kardiagramm" is a five-minute slog that does nothing and goes nowhere. It sounds like one of those finger-clicking 1920s-style swing songs. I would love to have been present when the record company executives were presented with it. You can't hum it, you can't dance to it, it's not clever, it doesn't make you think, it's not extreme or shocking, it doesn't advance music, it's a copy and paste nothing. "La Forme / Regeneration" is pleasant, but it would not seem out of place on the soundtrack of a second-hand PlayStation game from 1996. br / br /"Tour De France" is a return to form. It's the best song on the album. It sounds like a sweeping bicycle race through some mountains. The production is elaborate and charming. It has a catchy tune. Mind you, I would have preferred less heavy breathing. I felt that when I first heard the song, about ten years ago; it's actually from 1983. By which I mean that the audio recording is the original 1983 release of "Tour De France". It's a testament to Kraftwerk's potential for greatness that a twenty-year-old song could be re-released on an LP in 2003 without sounding hopelessly dated. I can't imagine Paul Hardcastle performing the same trick. On the other hand, "Tour De France" just goes to highlight how far Kraftwerk have fallen. There are as many ideas in this song as there are on the rest of the record, and they are condensed down to five minutes. br / br /Overall I am curious about this album. It cannot have taken very long to make. The music and the production are both very simple. It's like one of those extended remix singles that bands used to put out in the 1990s. "Vitamin" is decent, but the rest is completely disposable. It doesn't work as nostalgia; it doesn't work as a ground-breaking new direction in electronic dance pop; it doesn't work as a catchy fun record of pop tunes; it's not even very danceable.

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