Kraftwerk ‎– Tour De France Soundtracks

The 2003 LP sounds fantastic at my place and is worth getting hold of for 'Vitamin' alone.

If there's something worse than the remastered CD that's the remastered LP. All details and wonderful dynamics of the original are wiped out. Even some leftovers that still appear on the remastered CD have disappeared on the LP edition! What's left of the minimal-electro "Elektro Kardiogramm" after all without its detail?
If you want this go for the first edition!

Here is a list of why the Tour De France is an absolutely amatheur product TECHNICALWISE. I just mention the artistical-side.
1.- This is one of the worst soundquality recording I've ever heard from the electronic-genre. They made it even worse with the remastering series which is absolutely shit soundqualitywise. Just listen the Electric Café! That's an audiophile rec. This, as it is, without any remastering is worse than a cassette. With that is almost a boosted dictaphone. No deep sounds and there's no high-ends at all. It all sounds like there's nothing above 10kHz, instead of the avaliable 20kHz. But apart from it all: every single sound and minute is very cloudy, plastic and dynamicsless. Interestingly some tracks are worse than the others. Even more interestingly the single of Aero Dynamics includes the track in much better soundquality and it means that their PC stored-formula of the tracks are supposingly much better than those ones appears on the final result: on the CD. Why?
2.- The whole album is not completed. Sounds are missing, empty parts are present, lack of idea.
3.- The sound-engineering is horrible: I rarely heard such an unbalanced mix concerning some timbres and instruments. Just take the kick drum on the first parts as an example.
4.- Sonic timbres: Many of the sounds are absolutely amatheur on this CD. Kick drum, hi-hats, basses, some lines has no character and presence at all. Some ultracheap-sounds. Nearly all is a DIY job on a small household PC even in 2003. 8 Years before that, I've made all superb within my PC-softwares. So there's no real reason to sound sooo bad in 2003 in every aspect.
5.- Many of the sounds were overmanipulated on rubbish softwares. Those sounds became more dull and flat and became NOISY what is really a questionmark for me, while all the software-based soundgenerating stayed in the digital-domain. It means that even they wasn't satisfied with the result. They tweaked and experimented with them a lot. All sounds are not spontaneously bombastic and effortless but contraversary.
6.- The whole CD doesn't comply to the CD standard. The digital noise is at so high-level that the product could be ca. 8 bit in dynamics level instead of 16bit. Incredibly annoying. I calculate it on request.
7.- Personally me, I don't like the concept in all. Cycling is not worth singing about so pathetic way, let it be left to, say the Queen! 1 Song was very OK in 1983, this is an excess. The remixed TDF track lacks of something originality and the snare is bad.
8.- There's almost no a good melody-line on the whole album. Karl Bartos took that away.... For example: Vitamin and La Forme is terrible melodywise, Elektro Kardiogram is not completed. The latter's single version has a melodyline added.... was a waste....
9.- Most of the things is missing from the Kraftwerk, what was present a few years back. I'm happy to hear the album and I LIKE it but I'm very angry about the ultra-cheap and amatheur soulutions Kraftwerk were using here. I don't debate about the artistic content but technicalwise I don't know any worse album on the planet and I'm seriously speaking. That's all about Kraftwerk's mastery and professionalism... Did they ever listened the CD???? And then the Electric Café afterwards?.......

Kraftwerk have been ahead of their time since they started recording in 1971, and this record proves it. It was 17 years since the release of Electric Café, and the boys returned to the recording studio for the 100th anniversary of the world's most grueling sporting event...And they capture the feeling of the race PERFECTLY. You can hear it in every subtle nuance of the first 5 tracks; The ticking cymbals that remind one of bike chains...The breathing of the racers...You can feel the speed and turns.

An album truly worth it for the first 5 tracks alone, but that's not to say that the rest of the album is a throw-away, no sir. "Vitamin" is a throw-back to classic 'Werk if there ever was one...Slow funky rhythm, awesome synth melody...Aero Dynamik & Titanium, like the first 5 tracks, slowly build into each other, and the remixed version of the original 1983 "Tour de France" is quite welcome here.

While not as groundbreaking as, say, Autobahn or Trans-Europe Express, this is an excellent addition to anyone's Kraftwerk collection, and album collection, period.

Since 'The Mix', personally I really have no interest in hearing new Kraftwerk's music - for they are by now constantly recycling (besides cycling) their familiar and not-so-far-away past. 'Tour De France Soundtracks' might seem like a longtime wish coming true for the band exploring one such event into musical accompaniment (for the first time stretching its number of themes to considerable number of 12), but with the title chosen it is already a cliche for they made it more significant with the original 1983 tune.

Of course, there are moments of Kraftwerk' pristine beauty and perfection here (like 'Vitamin') but there are also moments of emptiness when it comes to their expensive and stripped-down-to-bare-minimum-technology. If Kraftwerk are the ideal form of an enterprise where commerce means music, then its perfect product by all means; however, if they are sort of a quadruple Bill Gates selling their 'Windows' it starts to show slight wear-offs. And eventually gets boring.

Nice and respectful but nothing as revolutionary.

This is an absolutely incredible release, definitely on a par with or even better than most of the great contemporary minimal techno/tech-house/microhouse records. The production across the whole album is perfect and most of these tracks would also definitely go down pretty well in clubs.

Everything these day's evolves from what it was, but, no worries, for change isn't always bad. Like Kraftwerk, which, had a positive change. The album is excellent and is a nice demonstration of their evolution from some of their older work. This cd is just as good as their older track.

I love this album . Fanatstic sounds in best Kraftwerk tradition . This album workd especially good on CD - it's a non-stop journey with sound . Lovely melodies , innovative sound-effects and a stringent subject matter (their beloved hobby ) : cycling and especially the myth of the worlds greatest sporting event . The TOUR DE FRANCE . Thos recording reminds me of another fine moment in KRAFTWERK's history "AUTOBAHN". This dynamic feeling of a non-stop forward movement thru electronic music . Hats off to the originators and respect 4 their best album to date .

That last comment was very entertaining. 'Tour De France' is truly a great album, and gets better and better the more I listen to it. There are only few of many musical artists that really have made a real impact on music history. Kraftwerk is definetly one of the few. They've done it some 30+ years ago. Why ask for anything else from them? They have released enough influential and innovative material. I look at 'Tour De France' as not being inspired by modern electronic usic, but inspired by their own material. 'Tour De France' doesn't sound that much different to me than say, 'Computer World'. Yes it is 20+ years later, but it is still Kraftwerk. There hasn't been many, if any, artists that we can say truly revolutionize music more than once in their career (especially not some 30 years later); an artist that truly created a new form of music twice, that inspired an entirely new generation of artists. I think that may be what some were expecting from 'TDF Soundtracks'.

Lush, warm analogs. Some tracks comparable to Detroit techno of past, with the signature Kraftwerk style of vocals and melodies. IMO, this is some of the best electronic music released in the recent past. I don't understand why some say it was not worth the wait and disappointing, comparing it to kraftwerk's previous material (though I don't think it is that far off). This is Kraftwerk, and the year 2003. I don't understand how one can truly understand electronic music and say 'TDF Soundtracks' is disappointing, but we are all different.