Kraftwerk

Radioactivity was Kraftwerk's fifth full-lenght release and their first fully electronic album. It is a concept album centered around radioactive decay and radio communications. As such it boasts a few big theme anthems surrounded by shorter variations of those themes with interconnecting shorter pieces of electronic music, sounds, and digitized voices.

"Kraftwerk built upon the international success of Autobahn by expanding their conceptual concepts to an album-length exploration of radio waves (and the band's other favorite wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum). Musically, the album represents a quantum leap of pop sensibility; though still distinctly a "prog" soundscape, its brilliant melodic hooks (best represented by the title track and Airwaves) are organized in more traditional - read shorter - form. In tracks such as the minimalist audio-verite News, Kraftwerk pay homage to another of their musical influences, the great modern composer/theorist Karlheinz Stockhausen. Antenna foreshadows the techno-gods they became, with its electronic washes and clever less-is-too-much lyrics, which read, in total: "I'm the antenna catching vibrations; you're the transmitter, give information!" Radio-Activity is an underrated masterpiece waiting to be rediscovered." - Jerry McCulley