3-D: THE CATALOGUE

After remastering all of their full-lengths from Autobahn onward for the long-in-production 2009 box set The Catalogue, pioneering electronic group Kraftwerk began performing the albums in full during series of retrospective concerts, beginning at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2012. As with their concerts since 2009, the group designed special three-dimensional visuals for the performances, and equipped the audience members with 3-D glasses straight out of a 1950s movie theater. Box set 3-D The Catalogue is an audio document of the arrangements devised for these concerts. No crowd noise is audible, but there is somewhat of a rough quality to the vocals, so they sound like live takes rather than polished studio perfection. By no means are these arrangements carbon copies of the album versions -- they're arranged to flow as performances rather than home-listening experiences, which means that track orders are sometimes shifted, and several songs are shortened. Additionally, as with all of Kraftwerk's performances since the '90s, the songs are often performed in the updated versions created for 1991's The Mix rather than the originals. The Mix itself is counted as a proper album, and here it includes "Planet of Visions" (a rework of the 1999 "Expo 2000" single incorporating elements of Underground Resistance's remix of the track) at the end of the disc, as it had become a staple of their live shows. The sound quality is fantastic; the recordings are awash with details and production effects that simply would not have been possible when most of the pieces were originally composed. ~ Paul Simpson