The three hundred and ninety-sixth album: #396 Kraftwerk - The Man Machine
Let's look away from the album's place in history - Kraftwerk's futuristic stylings also predating a lot of simpler later electro pop acts - or how odd it must have seemed at the time. Just listening to the album, there's a lot to unpack on how I feel. There are some really interesting compositions in here, layering more like the works we listen to in the classical recordings than more regular pop songs. There are a lot of moments where it grabs your attention, but also enough repetition of the same elements that it lulls you in - often grabbing you with a change to suddenly remind you what you're listening to. It's never quite ambient, but it doesn't overwhelm you at any point either. And it addresses just enough to have a theme without requiring you to listen to it that much - The Model being the most lyric heavy, and standing out because of that. It is great in what it does - not excluding anything else, but with its own beauty.