Somewhere in my CD collection there’s an old copy of Kraftwerk’s Computer World. Blame it on my childhood in Germany or my early teens listening to Depeche Mode and Gary Numan. Whatever… secretly I always wished Herr Hutter & Co would remaster their old albums. That day finally dawned on Oktober 12 when Kraftwerk unveiled 8 albums with glorious teutonic remastering. Gott im Himmel!

If you’ve been hiding in a jazz-tinged elevator, you’ll be thinking “Kraftwerk… who they?”. True, they were never cool in my neighbourhood and I kept quiet about my attempts to dance like a robot to The Model. Little did I know the impact they were having stateside. Turns out Trans-Europe Express was a huge hit with Bronx b-boy crews during the late 70’s. One day Afrika Bambaataa sampled the melody and added a pinch from Numbers to cook up Planet Rock. The rest is hip-hop history. Looking back now, everyone from Grandmaster Flash to Jay-Z and Daft Punk has fessed up to worshipping Kraftwerk.

Just to prove the point, check out Drowned In Sound’s playlist of artists who owe a massive debt to Kraftwerk here and listen out for the Kraftwerk samples in Planet Rock.

So what do the remasters sound like? In a word, stunning. A few critics claim there’s a loss of “spaciousness”, but I suspect they miss the cold tinny sound of the early CDs. Do yourself a favour and crank it up. My personal faves are The Man-Machine (1978) and Computer World (1981). If you’re hiding an old copy, now’s the time to replace it. Or if you ever wondered what electronic music sounded like before MIDI or Auto-Tune, here’s the best place to start. All 8 albums come in slipcases and the artwork has been tarted up. Vorsprung never sounded so inviting.