Die Mensch-Maschine: Universal Man
Tracy Howse
Die Mensch-Maschine, or The Man Machine, by Kraftwerk was
released on their seventh album, The Man
Machine, in May of 1978. Kraftwerk's minimal music had a widespread impact on German and international music of the
70s. The song Man Machine was the title song on this album and portrays many of
the esthetics of Kraftwerk as well as robots in general.
The song
starts with an introduction of clicking noises on the beats; these sounds are not
strong hits and have a lot of reverb. The light melody is added and it is
clearly an unnatural instrumental sound. A bass, too, is added, which increases
the layering through its sparse rhythm. This layering is built even more when
percussion enters the mix. The hits are soft but have a lot of impact because
they hit on the beats. More layering comes in through artificial sounding
noises that sound more like pitches wavering, rather than actual pitches. This
combination of noises creates a sterile and mechanical sound. The “chorus”
starts when the lyrics
“Man Machine” enter. The voices have the same sort
of reverb as the noises in the beginning and are clearly unnatural. Their
strictness and repetition only amplifies their robotic sound. During the
verse-like section, some of the layers drop out and the minimal sounds create a
contrast from the chorus. This part, once again rebuilds, however it introduces
a sort of “boing” or “clanging” noises. The song is then structured as chorus,
verse, chorus, outro.
The title,
“Man Machine,” relates to this song because the parts in this song are clearly artificial.
The lyrics say “Man Machine, pseudo human being,” which means a false or fake
human being. This is explaining the machine as being a fake human being;
clearly robotic in nature. The clicking noises in the beginning have an echo
effect and sound as if they are the moving parts of a robot. These melodies and
harmonies also are mechanical due to their strictness and repetition. The
layering creates a combination of moving parts that work together in a very
rigid and structured way, just as a robot does. Ralf, a member of the band, was
quoted in an interview: “Machines dance, so to speak,’ Ralf muses, ‘and
repetition, rhythm, builds. But that’s more an artistic fiction” (Toop 202).
Ralf is saying that us taking repetition or rhythm and using it to personify
machines is a figment of our imaginative minds. We do this because of the
robotic esthetics that these noises portray.
One of the
robotic esthetics this piece encompasses is the “obsession with perfection.”
This is evident through the structure of the song as a whole as well as the alteration
of the sounds. Aside from this song, the band itself also had an obsession with
perfection. “The subject matter was the philosophy but deeper still was the
obsession with pure sound” (Toop 202). This idea of the “pure sound” creates a
song, like Man Machine, that is precise, structured, and rigid sounding.
Another robotic esthetic this piece has is “the important sound of things
falling apart,” which is the part of a song or piece when the music seems to
have glitched or broken. This is evident through the “boing” noises during the
verses of this song. These noises give the impression of sprockets breaking or a
glitch occurring in this “Man Machine” we are apparently listening to. The
esthetic of “replacing humans with technological substitutes” is also prevalent
in the lyrics of “Man Machine.” The voice refers to the Man Machine as a pseudo
or fake human being, but then calls it a “super human being.” This idea of
machine being better than the humans invokes the fear that humans will be
replaced or ruled by these machines. The esthetic “the blurring of man and
machine,” or the “Uncanny Valley
” is
also displayed in this song. This uncanny valley is the idea that there
is a
category between robot and human where the object or creature is
neither, and
both at the same time. This unnerving middle ground can be seen in
Figure 1 below. The voices in this song seem to hit that uncanny valley,
because the
voice is clearly not natural but also is not 100% robotic. Another
example of
this uncanny valley is the pictures inside the booklet cover art for
“The Man
Machine” (See Figure 2 below.)
 |
| Figure 1 |
 |
| Figure 2 |
Kraftwerk in
general has songs that are very multinational. The mechanical and industrial
sounding songs make them accessible to other nations while also spreading the
influences of Germany.
“’Industrial societies are today worldwide,’ says Ralf. The ideal, he suggests,
is to have ‘artistic presence also. Not just big corporations, business,
numbers, money, people, but art, music” (Toop 204). Ralf is saying that they wanted
the technology to be a part of the every day lives in every aspect. Toop refers
to this as a “new Volksmusik,” or a
new music for the people (Toop 204). This multinational view is also explained
by Redmond during his explanation
of Evangelion:
“What
distinguishes Evangelion from the
run-of-the-mill mecha or giant robot cartoon is not simply its ground-breaking
animation, sparkling editing, and world-class sequences; rather, Anno sublated
the mecha as a form, transforming the latter into the basis for a new kind of
multinational aesthetics… transformed Western European auteur cinema and
Eastern European theatrical and musical forms into the field of Eurovideo”
(Redmond).
What Redmond
calls “Eurovido” is sort of the parallel of Volksmusik.
It is the action of taking esthetics from various cultures and combining them
into an art form, making the multinational concept as a whole accessible. The
song The Man Machine encompasses in terms of actual languages of societies
because of how many languages it was released in. Also, however, the song as a
whole reaches this multinational concept. It takes a man, who has no specific
nationality, and combines it with a robot. Therefore, this Man Machine is
symbol of Germany,
its origin, as well as all of the nations together.
Works Cited
Toop, David. Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds. London:
Serpent's Tail, 1995. 200-07. Print.
Further readings:
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