Radioactivity – Kraftwerk (1975)

Description

Additional information about this, Kraftwerk vinyl art.

Kraftwerk – The Artist

Kraftwerk (German: for “power station”) is a German band formed in Düsseldorf in 1970 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. Widely considered to be innovators and pioneers of electronic music, they were among the first successful acts to popularise the genre. The group began as part of West Germany’s experimental krautrock scene in the early 1970s before fully embracing electronic instrumentation, including synthesisers, drum machines, vocoders, and home-made experimental musical instruments. On commercially successful albums such as Autobahn (1974), Trans-Europe Express (1977), and The Man-Machine (1978), Kraftwerk developed a self-described “robot pop” style that combined electronic music with pop melodies, sparse arrangements, and repetitive rhythms, while adopting a stylised image including matching suits.

Radioactivity – The Song

‘Radioactvity’ (German: “Radioaktivität”) is a song by the German electronic music band Kraftwerk. It was released in May 1976 as the lead and only single from their fifth studio album, Radio-Activity (1975). The song was a commercial success in France, but was not as successful in other countries as Kraftwerk’s previous hit single “Autobahn”. “Radioactivity” was re-issued 1991 as a single from Kraftwerk’s remix album The Mix. Featuring remixes by François Kevorkian and William Orbit. The song now has brand-new lyrics compared to the old version, in effect turning it into an anti-nuclear protest song, with references to the Hiroshima bombing, Three Mile Island (Harrisburg), Chernobyl, and Sellafield.

The Atomic Model – The Shape

This record has been modelled into the silhouette of an atomic model showing  a proton, nucleus, neutron and electrons. An atom is the smallest unit of ordinary matter that forms a chemical element. Every solid, liquid, gas, and plasma is composed of neutral or ionised atoms. Atoms are extremely small, typically around 100 picometers across. They are so small that accurately predicting their behavior using classical physics—as if they were tennis balls, for example—is not possible due to quantum effects. Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons. More than 99.94% of an atom’s mass is in the nucleus. The protons have a positive electric charge, the electrons have a negative electric charge, and the neutrons have no electric charge. If the number of protons and electrons are equal, then the atom is electrically neutral. If an atom has more or fewer electrons than protons, then it has an overall negative or positive charge, respectively – such atoms are called ions.The electrons of an atom are attracted to the protons in an atomic nucleus by the electromagnetic force. The protons and neutrons in the nucleus are attracted to each other by the nuclear force. This force is usually stronger than the electromagnetic force that repels the positively charged protons from one another. Under certain circumstances, the repelling electromagnetic force becomes stronger than the nuclear force. In this case, the nucleus splits and leaves behind different elements. This is a form of nuclear decay.

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