It’s worth remembering that in the several years before they became Kraftwerk Kraftwerk, they were absolutely a part of a local scene, and that’s audible here. They’re already the cleanest of the lot, don’t get it twisted. No mistakes allowed is the Ralf and Florian way. There are no weak tracks on Kraftwerk albums—they don’t allow it. And there is a lot of Neu!’s chug in this music, even though Dinger and Rother were long gone. Florian is still playing the flute, though not for much longer. “Klingklang” has a multipartite structure that more than resembles Tortoise’s “Djed” from twenty-five years later. With that sweet Conny Plank clarity, this is one of the stronger krautrock albums. “Wellenlange” is the boys tapping on guitars and letting sounds swirl around and hang–this should have been a whole album. This song is one of my favorite moments in this whole era, and really unlike anything else.