Bondi Bikes is Sydney’s one stop shop for sit up and beg bikes, 3 speeds, fixies, single speeds and cool retro bicycle stuff. You might remember the incredible album artwork for Kraftwerk’s ‘Tour De Force’– originally released in 2003…. well it seems the iconic cover is the main source of inspiration for the freshly-painted mural on the trendy bike shop’s street-facing wall:

The year 2003 marked the centenary of the Tour de France, the conceptual starting line for Kraftwerk’s first album for over a decade. Digitally re-mastered and re-released in 2009, the new edition features an immaculate new version of a 20-year-old former single, the exquisitely graceful ‘Tour de France’, pop nostalgia is not on the menu. From the chunky cyber-funk of ‘Vitamin’ to the restless metallic shimmers of ‘Aéro Dynamik’, this is emphatically the sound of 21st century techno visionaries.

Kraftwerk are unique, pristine, profound and beautiful. Decades may pass, but their streamlined synthetic symphonies stand outside time, as fresh as tomorrow, transcendent and sublime.

Check em out for yourself, or if you’re in Sydney, head to Bondi Bikes and admire their Kraftwerk inspired wall – they’re at 230 Oxford St, Bondi Junction.

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.