Organisation - Tone Float (1970)
Tone Float is an obscure LP by German band Organisation. The album sold few copies on its UK-only release in August 1970, and might have been forgotten forever had two of the band members, Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider-Esleben, not gone on to change the face of 20th century music with their next group Kraftwerk. It was produced by Konrad "Conny" Plank.
The Tone Float record is by no means a classic of the Krautrock genre, being for the most part rather unfocussed.
The track "Milk Rock" perhaps offers the best glimpse of the Kraftwerk to come, with its powerful riffing bass guitar, and Schneider already heavily manipulating his flute using an EMS pitch-to-CV converter to drive other electronics.
‘The studio was in the middle of an oil refinery. When we came out of the door we could hear the sound of those big flames burning off the fumes – all kinds of industrial noises.’
— Ralf Hütter
Sales were poor and RCA opted to drop the band, which then dissolved.
The album has never been officially reissued, although bootleg CDs and LPs appeared in the 1990s. These often included a bonus audio track, erroneously titled "Vor dem blauen Bock", from a 22 May 1971 performance by Kraftwerk on the Bremen Beat-Club TV show.
Tracks:
01. Tone Float – 20:46
02. Milk Rock – 5:24
03. Silver Forest – 3:19
04. Rhythm Salad – 4:04
05. Noitasinagro – 7:46
06. Vor dem Blauen Rock.
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