SPIN

April 11, 2012 – Face it, mensches: The concept of Teutonic technologists Kraftwerk performing eight live shows, each based on a single album, at New York's Museum of Modern Art could have packed all the surprises of Wagner's Ring cycle — just substitute robots with computers for the fat lady and the symphony. If you'd tinkered even slightly with any rhythm music made since 1975 (minimalism, disco, hip-hop, EDM), or dabbled in dime-store futurism aesthetics of any other discipline, Kraftwerk's devices have infiltrated your world, either first-hand or via your favorite composer/DJ/producer/developer/designer. Which is why you could reliably assume that what the MoMA shows might lack in innovation (especially since co-founding mastermind Florian Schneider would not be taking part) it would make up for in production.

January 5, 2012 – In the early '90s, "What were the skies like when you were young?" was the new, "Can you pass the acid test?" — the question that separated the turned-on from those left behind. Britain's 1988 Summer of Love and acid house's ascent as the soundtrack the English anti-mainstream updated hippie-spiritualist concepts for an increasingly digital generation. But the Orb's "Little Fluffy Clouds" took this druggy-cum-artsy utopian outlook, fed it through new technological methodology, and came out with a masterpiece.