Kraftwerk - Live in Budapest 1991

Kraftwerk live at Sportscentre, Budapest, Hungary
November 29th, 1991
The Mix Tour
Home Remaster
Recording quality: A-/B+
Attendance: 10.000 - 12.500
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00:00:00 Meine Damen Und Herren
00:00:45 Nummern
00:05:47 Computerwelt
00:10:13 Home Computer
00:18:20 Computerliebe
00:25:43 The Model
00:29:36 Tour De France
00:37:50 Autobahn
00:49:22 Radioactivity
00:58:23 Trans Europa Express
01:09:32 The Robots
01:14:32 Robotronik
01:19:27 Pocket Calculator/Taschenrechner
01:32:07 Music Non Stop
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The Iron Curtain fell which meant for Kraftwerk that they can play concerts in more countries now. Although they already played in Hungary and Poland in 1981, they also tried to play concerts in Prague, Moscow, Belgrade and in Chemnitz according to an 1981 interview and the Twingokraftwerk site, but the 4 concerts were either declined (because some Eastern states were still strict when it comes to the music industry) or are unconfirmed (there's no evidence of Belgrade concert though Yugoslavia was a neutral and less strict Eastern state). After 10 years, they didn't have to negotiate with the governments of the Eastern states for the concerts anymore, so they decided to play in Leipzig, (former) East Berlin, Budapest and Prague. They played in a stadium with an extremely high capacity which marks Budapest '91 as being the concert with the highest attendace of the 1991 tour. The audience was so excited that they even threw a towel at Henning during Pocket Calculator. Normally, the Kraftwerkers play the songs in German, when they are playing in Germany, and in English, when they are playing outside of Germany. In Budapest '91, it's completely different. Some songs were played in German and some were play in English. Originally, they wanted to play Radioactivity in German too, but they changed their about it during the concert. Florian forgot the change the vocoder voice in the middle section back to the English language. It feels like as if the instrumental part was longer than in the mid November concerts. The fast tape speed of the earlier concerts can trick the mind. Addionally, the clap drum got a phaser which gave a metallic feeling to the song. Pocket Calculator was sung both in English and in German and they tested their equipment before playing the song. Fritz did an incredible solo in Music Non Stop. He fiddled around with the pitch of the orchestral hit. This solo is as unique as Florian's solos in Manchester '91 and in London-2 '91. Fritz did simillar solos in the 2022 concerts. What Henning did in his solo was also amazing. There was a rising SFX sound at the beginning of his solo. Ralf didn't only play the pad on the keyboard which he did intensively unlike in the other concerts. He also played the tom drum which Fritz usually did. It is stated that Budapest '91 has the longest MNS. It may only feel like it because the solos are much more intense than in the other concerts and because the recording has the full outro of the song. Not much is known about Prague '91, but a video snippet of the concert shows that it's also a bilingual concert.
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The recording has a high frequency range, but it lacks from dynamic range which reduces the sound quality. Looking at the waveform of the recording before it was remastered by me, it seems like it already got mastered with a heavy compressor by the recorder or a trader. It didn't concern me before, but now it does after I've watched a video about the loudness war in the music industry which also gave me a lession that I should be more careful with the dynamic range when remastering concert audios. The high frequencies sound harsh (and muffled in Pocket Calculator) as well. I tried to form them in a way that makes them sound less harsh. What I also did is correcting the speed and fixing the order of the songs.
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