Model behaviour

• Last Updated: June 17. 2010 6:20PM UAE / June 17. 2010 2:20PM GMT

With Bionic, Christina Aguilera has become just the latest in a long line of artists to flirt with Ballardian ideas of human-mechanical hybridity, from the oddball compositions of the 1960s pop producer Joe Meek to the Detroit techno of Juan Atkins and Derrick May. Thanks to its wealth of cultural associations – movies, TV shows, comic books and more besides – it’s hardly surprising that this perennial sci-fi theme has proven such a seductive narrative for musicians. After all, folk singers aside, who wouldn’t want to play around with imagery that immediately places their work at the very forefront of sonic progress?

No matter how many performers return to these tropes, though, only one band has ever made them truly its own: the boundary-breaking German art-pop group Kraftwerk. In fact, so successful was the band’s 1978 album The Man-Machine, that even now it is hard to consider its cover stars (Ralf Hütter, Karl Bartos, Wolfgang Flür and Florian Schneider) 100 per cent flesh and blood. Combining what was at its time the very latest in synthesizer technology with impeccable styling and archly deadpan vocals delivered in enigmatic, European-accented English, this record was and still remains a conceptual triumph. In fact, its highlights, The Model and The Robots, still sound as fresh and futuristic as the day they were first released.

* The Review