Kraftwerk have announced a “vivid” 50th anniversary reissue of their first entirely electronic album ‘Radio-Activity’.
The record was the pioneering German band’s fifth studio LP and was originally released in late 1975, a concept album that explored themes of radioactive decay and radio communication.
To celebrate five full decades of the album, the band will release new editions, using the original 16-track master tapes. Kraftwerk founder Ralf Hütter has worked alongside Fritz Hilpert to create a new Dolby Atmos Mix, which will deliver “vivid new shading, forensic detail and richly layered cinematic depth” to the record.
To be released on May 15, there will be a Blu-ray audio disc featuring Dolby Atmos, 5.1 and stereo mixes of the original album, with an exclusive anniversary booklet. A special edition 12” vinyl picture disc of the 2009 remaster of the album will also be available, and the full Dolby Atmos mix will be released on streaming.
You can pre-order your copy of the ‘Radio-Activity’ 50th anniversary re-release here.
Kraftwerk are also preparing to play a new UK and Ireland leg of their ‘Multimedia’ tour, which they have extended due to “exceptional demand”.
Hütter and co. will kick off the shows at Dublin’s Bord Gais Energy Theatre on May 17, before heading to Belfast, Wolverhampton, Manchester, Glasgow, Stockton, Sheffield, Brighton, Bristol and Bournemouth.
They will then play three huge shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall on June 4 and 5, before rounding off the tour with gigs in Liverpool, Nottingham and finally Edinburgh’s Playhouse on June 9.
See the full list of dates here and find any remaining tickets for the tour here.
The shows will make up Kraftwerk’s first UK tour since 2017, although they did play a one-off show at Milton Keynes’ Forever Now Festival in June.
The ‘Multimedia’ tour first began in 2012 at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and is described in a press release as “part performance, part digital installation”. The 3D shows see the band playing music from across their career, including from the classic albums ‘Autobahn’ (1974), ‘Trans Europe Express’ (1977) and ‘Computer World’ (1981).
In other news, some of the band’s late co-founder Florian Schneider’s instruments went up for auction in November, including his suitcase synthesiser, flute and several vocoders.