Music Reviews

Has it really been 50 years since electro-pop pioneers Kraftwerk graced us with the sprawling techno-majesty of their fourth album, Autobahn? Mein Gott.

Technically speaking, Autobahn was released in November 1974 by Philips, so we’re entering Year 51 of its mighty wake—but oh, what a long, sweet ride it has been. Kraftwerk’s enduring influence on electronic, pop, and progressive music writ large is practically incalculable. Whenever one deigns to (re)visit their life’s work, it’s quite refreshing to realize how timeless Kraftwerk’s music feels in the here and now of the first quarter of the 21st century, anytime you cue them up.

In recent years, Kraftwerk, at the direction of co-founding lead singer/keyboardist Ralf Hütter and engineer Fritz Hilpert, have been immersing themselves—and us—in 360-degree explorations of their most infamous works, both live and on record. During the pandemic, I enveloped myself in the Atmos-tastic wonders of Kraftwerk’s 3-D Blu-ray, which was recorded live on their 2017 3D Tour—and you can read my 2020-posted impressions of that listening/viewing experience here on S&V, after you scroll down a bit, that is. (Incidentally, Kraftwerk is back out on the road in 2025, and if you want to see them, you can check out their upcoming tour dates through August here.)

And now, we have what I’ll nickname Autobahn 360. Upon revisiting the album’s original 16-track master tapes, Hütter and Hilpert created a brand-new Dolby Atmos mix for Autobahn, which was released on Blu-ray via Kling Klang/Parlophone on March 7, 2025, in addition to being made available digitally on Apple Music, Amazon, and Tidal. On the BD, you can switch between Atmos, DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, and stereo mix options for the core album’s five tracks, in addition to experiencing 2024 edits of “Autobahn” and “Kometenmelodie 2.” The abbreviated version of “Autobahn” utilizes an Atmos-ized visualizer video culled from Kraftwerk’s live projections, replete with Volkswagen and Mercedes vehicular imagery.

As you might expect, I cycled through listening to all 50 minutes of these new Autobahn Atmos mixes with earbuds, headphones, and open-air speakers, but it was really no contest that taking the more scenic BD route—by (high)way of my floorstanding GoldenEar Technology Triton One loudspeakers as the fronts, a pair of GoldenEar Triton Sevens as the rears, and my current Sony Atmos speakers for those all-important uber-height channels—was the best path to follow here.

Before turning the Atmos ignition, it’s worth noting that the aural template for Autobahn centers around Kraftwerk’s deft deployments of a Minimoog synthesizer, a customized Farfisa Rhythm Unit 10 drum machine, and customized Vox Percussion King drum machines. Besides the synths, you’ll also hear violin, guitar, flute, and additional percussion throughout the mix—but, rest assured, the electro-template is the main musical focus. In essence, Autobahn is the opening salvo that shows how Kraftwerk made a quite deliberate shift from their early-’70s krautrock origins to exploring much more melodic electropop territory for the balance of their ensuing career.

The 22-minute title track goes through as many twists, turns, crests, and valleys as any truly interesting and extended highway road trip might. It’s the first Kraftwerk song to feature lyrics—mostly repeated variations of the German phrase, “Wir fahr’n fahr’n fahr’n auf der Autobahn,” though you would certainly be forgiven for hearing it come across as, “the fun fun fun of the Autobahn.” The more direct translation of this phrase is actually, “We drive drive drive on the motorway”—but the intended, positive feeling it evokes is essentially the same, because Kraftwerk designed this track to mirror a very particular joyful driving experience.

“Autobahn” opens with a car engine revving in the front right, powering up through each channel in a successive, clockwise fashion before the drive fully gets underway. The repeated lyric nestles in the height channels as the main melodic theme pulses louder in the fronts and echoes in the rears. As we move along through “Autobahn,” the theme varies every 2-3 minutes in terms of tempo and placement—mirroring the shifting of gears, changing of lanes, and varying of driving speeds—sometimes burbling up on high, and sometimes ping-ponging (or should that be, kling-klanging?) into the side channels. The main vocal line will eventually move to the right soundfield and be lightly countered in the rears, and sometimes additional German lyrics come into play, further describing the trip at hand, before the main theme returns us to the road we’re supposed to be traveling together.

In effect, this 22-minute journey is the aural equivalent of a driver’s (sub)conscious recurring process of clocking all the visual checkpoints—the road that’s directly ahead of you, what’s in the rearview mirror and each of the side mirrors, and what’s happening through the back window—repeatedly until the final destination is reached. By the time we get to the last curve of “Autobahn,” Kraftwerk have propelled us toward an uplifting, conclusional shift in the heights and rears before their final, full-channel synthesized swooshing ends our shared journey.

From there, four shorter tracks conclude the album, taking us through our immersive paces. “Kometenmelodie 1” (“Comet Melody 1”) takes off with extended-note synth swatches and introduces some low-end thumps a bit back in the mix (hello, sub channel!) along with some nice piano lines before flowing directly into the much sunnier “Kometenmelodie 2,” which sends its own brighter synth spindles into the heights. “Mitternacht” (“Midnight”) unfolds with a church-organ line buttressed by guitar squalls and caterwauls before a series of synthesized plonks echo clockwise throughout each channel, akin to the drip-drip-drip of a water tap you can’t quite turn off. Autobahn concludes with “Morgenspaziergang” (“Morning Walk”), a pleasant romp through nature with pulsy squelches to start our a.m. stroll, followed by a waft of bird calls, woodpecker thwacks, and babbling brooks before a far-Eastern denouement carries us all back home.

Riding along with Kraftwerk on Autobahn is an exhilarating Atmos trip, to say the least—and it portends good things for potential future 360-degree catalog revisits to come. (“Musique Non Stop,” anyone?) In the meantime—genieße die fahr’n.

Autobahn can be listened to in Dolby Atmos here on Kraftwerk’s artist page on Apple Music.