This interview is insane/amazing/what-have-you

(link...)

here's a review of the album I wrote a few weeks ago for a 3D blog:

Kraftwerk is a German ‘techno-pop’ group dating back to the 1970s, pioneers in bringing electronic (i.e. synthesized) music to the rock scene. The quartet recently embarked on a tour using stereoscopic video projections as a backdrop. These performances have been recorded - and enhanced - on a new Blu-ray disc titled “The Catalogue,” a sampler of music from their eight commercially released albums. The 3D animations, originally viewed (with glasses) on a screen behind the performers standing at their podiums, literally come to life as they fill the entire video display, often superimposed over the ‘live’ performance.

The eight digital sequences vary in quality, from being rather flat, layered, and repetitive, to deep and immersive. As visual expression of music - pioneered by Disney in his “Fantasia” - the technique generally works well. Of particular note is Sequence No. 6 titled “Music Non-Stop,” a 3-part suite that takes the viewer through a spatial landscape of dancing music symbols, culminating in an inventive wire-frame animation of the four musicians themselves.

A meaningful critique of this ambitious work has to reference Norman McLaren’s two animated Polaroid 3D shorts created for the 1951 Festival of Britain (available on the Blu-ray “3D Rarities” disc). McLaren, of course, did not have access to today’s digital technology: his images were either hand-drawn or captured from an oscilloscope screen. The shorts remain extraordinary pieces of work both as early experiments in stereoscopic animation and jewel-like artistic creations.

While the Kraftwerk sequences don’t have the narrative sophistication of McLaren’s work nor the refined animation of, say, a Pixar production, they are highly entertaining and surely of interest to 3D enthusiasts. (For those not interested in the stereoscopic effect, a companion non-stereoscopic DVD is provided in the beautifully designed and crafted package.)