How Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track Radioactivity became an anti-nuclear anthem

Fifty years old this month, Kraftwerk's single Radioactivity was a groundbreaking track that morphed into the German electronic pioneers' most political protest song.

From the tremulous opening seconds of Kraftwerk's Radioactivity – a pulsing Geiger counter; escalating synths; shrill morse code spelling out the title – you sense that nothing will sound the same again.

This core track from the German electronic pioneers' fifth studio album Radio-Activity (1975) feels like a scientific hymn, but it also strikes warning notes within its insistent hooks and haunting Sprechgesang (spoken singing) refrain: "Radioactivity / Is in the air for you and me". 

Over the decades, Radioactivity itself has mutated, from elegiac melody to club banger and an anti-nuclear clarion call, while remaining fantastically distinctive. Half-a-century on, the album is reissued for its 50th anniversary, and this anthem still crackles with Kraftwerk's creative power.

Kraftwerk originally recorded their Radio-Activity album between bursts of transatlantic tour dates. It extended the experimental pop and deadpan wit of their international breakthrough Autobahn (1974), with lyrics in both English and German. 

It was also a curiosity, evoking a new "information age" as well as a Cold War-era dread. It debuted Kraftwerk's "classic" quartet line-up: co-founders Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider (who co-produced the album at the band's Kling Klang studio in Düsseldorf), Karl Bartos, and Wolfgang Flür.

Their music moved into fully electronic realms, coolly detaching from Kraftwerk's earlier folky/jazzy style (where Schneider had played flute and violin); their signature synth sounds were sealed, including on the punchy Minimoog and the eerie chorals of the Vako Orchestron. Despite the album's relative brevity (its 12 tracks run to under 38 minutes), its atmosphere is intoxicating – and there is always a sense of wonder amid the tension.

"It's a science fiction kind of album," Hütter, the band's remaining original member, told Uncut magazine's Stephen Dalton in 2009. "Horror and beauty. The concept was infiltration by radio station – which is maybe more dangerous than radioactivity. We worked with tapes, editing pieces, glue. All electronics. And more singing and speaking, like speech symphonies."

'A signpost to the future' 

Kraftwerk's entire catalogue is a kind of extraordinary circuit board, connecting to unlimited musical styles: hip-hop; electro; ambient; new wave; synth pop; industrial rock; Detroit techno; contemporary classical. Radio-Activity particularly seized the spirit of sound and vision. The original artwork was designed by long-time collaborator Emil Schult, while the music was presented in increasingly ambitious ways: in Flür's book, I Was a Robot, he relates playing Radioactivity live using a light-triggered "percussion cage", which would frequently glitch onstage. The album has been sampled by acts including New Order (most famously on Blue Monday), The Chemical Brothers, and Miley Cyrus.

The band have also been cited as an inspiration by stars from David Bowie to Ryuichi Sakamoto (who once told US journalist Jim Sullivan that he'd co-founded Yellow Magic Orchestra because "we wanted to make a Japanese Kraftwerk") and the composer Max Richter (who once told me that, aged 13, he'd written to the BBC........

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