Kraftwerk ‎– Tour De France 2003

Pardon the expression, but OMG. This is like being carressed in ever-shifting folds of silk as you float blissfully in outer space. Beautiful is too weak of a word to describe this.

The main song is quite good, but there's no need for 3 different versions when the only big difference is the vocals; 1&3 have speech-synth vox while 2 has vocoded human vox. It gets boring after 5 minutes so it's really only worth listening to part 2. Then you get the general picture. They should have replaced one of the versions on this single with Chrono from the album in which they decide to actually bring some more interesting sounds in.
Overall, bland, boring, and a bad representation of the album. Aerodynamik is a much better single.

Not offensive, by any means, but by no means groundbreaking, and actually
pretty tame. Sounds like they've been listening heavily to stuff from
Kompakt, or some generic "Detroit" artist. The references are really heavy-handed and obvious, and it's somewhat disappointing to hear a once-influential group reduced to cribbing style points from the people they influenced.

Come to think of it, the release of the original tune in July 1983 was probably timed to coincide with the start of the (80th) Tour de France competition too. :)

I can only assume that in their hurry to get this track finished in time for the centennial Tour de France race they forgot to include the fantastic electro-tinged percussion and even the amazing timeless melody of the classic 1983 original! I was expecting this to be a reworking of one of my all-time favourite tunes but instead this is basically a brand new track. It's mellow and reasonably melodic techno, with new lyrics too; it's nice enough and has grown on me a little but it was still a disappointment. I have heard that there should be a new version of the original tune on their forthcoming album though... I hope they've done it justice!