Bleep

Radioland is a reimagining of Kraftwerk’s under-appreciated 1975 album Radio-Activity by sound artist Franck Vigroux, award-winning pianist/composer Matthew Bourne, and installation artist Antoine Schmitt. Originally debuting as a live show on the 40th anniversary of the album’s original release, Radioland is not a faithful, note-for-note replication of the album. Instead, it uses Radio-Activity as its starting point and goes from there, using the songs as material to play with and riff on. The original melodies and rhythms are briefly referenced, but the album goes on to reveal more original and more intricate ideas, discovering new avenues to pursue within Kraftwerk’s original design. Radioland uses analogue instruments, rewired melodies, vocal processing, and drones discovered in space by NASA recently as some of its building blocks. Meanwhile, many of the reimagined versions of Radio-Activity’s songs take influences from genres that came about after that album, like synth pop, R&B, and hip hop – genres that were directly influenced by Kraftwerk’s futuristic sound. It’s a neat demonstration of the German group’s long-lasting legacy, using the past to discover the present and future.