• In August 2003, Kraftwerk released Tour de France Soundtracks, its first album of new material since 1986's Electric Café. In January
and February 2003, before the release of the album, the band started the extensive Minimum-Maximum world tour, using four
customised Sony VAIO laptop computers, effectively leaving the entire Kling Klang studio in Germany. The group also obtained a new
set of transparent video panels to replace its four large projection screens. This greatly streamlined the running of all of the group's
sequencing, sound-generating, and visual-display software. From this point, the band's equipment increasingly reduced manual
playing, replacing it with interactive control of sequencing equipment. Ralph Hütter retained the most manual performance, still playing
musical lines by hand on a controller keyboard and singing live vocals and having a repeating ostinato. Florian Schneider's live
vocoding had been replaced by software-controlled speech-synthesis techniques.
• In November 2003, the group made a surprising appearance at the MTV European Music Awards in Edinburgh, performing
‘Aerodynamik’. The same year a promotional box set entitled 12345678 (subtitled The Catalogue) was issued, with plans for a proper
commercial release to follow. The box featured remastered editions of the group's eight core studio albums, from Autobahn to Tour de
France Soundtracks. This long-awaited box-set was eventually released in a different set of remasters in November 2009.
• By February 2004, the band had taken tour to Scandinavia, where, on 6th, they performed in Helsinki, Finland, followed on the 8 -10th
February, by 2 shows at Sweden’s Cirkus venue in the country’s capital city, Stockholm.
• Still rated as one of the finest shows of the entire tour, the concert was recorded for live FM radio broadcast and is now available in its
entirety for the first time on this new 2 CD set.
and February 2003, before the release of the album, the band started the extensive Minimum-Maximum world tour, using four
customised Sony VAIO laptop computers, effectively leaving the entire Kling Klang studio in Germany. The group also obtained a new
set of transparent video panels to replace its four large projection screens. This greatly streamlined the running of all of the group's
sequencing, sound-generating, and visual-display software. From this point, the band's equipment increasingly reduced manual
playing, replacing it with interactive control of sequencing equipment. Ralph Hütter retained the most manual performance, still playing
musical lines by hand on a controller keyboard and singing live vocals and having a repeating ostinato. Florian Schneider's live
vocoding had been replaced by software-controlled speech-synthesis techniques.
• In November 2003, the group made a surprising appearance at the MTV European Music Awards in Edinburgh, performing
‘Aerodynamik’. The same year a promotional box set entitled 12345678 (subtitled The Catalogue) was issued, with plans for a proper
commercial release to follow. The box featured remastered editions of the group's eight core studio albums, from Autobahn to Tour de
France Soundtracks. This long-awaited box-set was eventually released in a different set of remasters in November 2009.
• By February 2004, the band had taken tour to Scandinavia, where, on 6th, they performed in Helsinki, Finland, followed on the 8 -10th
February, by 2 shows at Sweden’s Cirkus venue in the country’s capital city, Stockholm.
• Still rated as one of the finest shows of the entire tour, the concert was recorded for live FM radio broadcast and is now available in its
entirety for the first time on this new 2 CD set.