Kraftwerk - Spacelab

Wanted to give some balance to the "white people" side of the ledger today and who better to do that with than the Big K? Chuck "The Model" and The Man Machine could be a pretty decent sci-fi concept album - "Metropolis" and "Neon Lights" almost put me in mind of the on-Earth bits at the beginning of Solaris, and this song and "The Man Machine" are 2001 homages, in spirit if not in literal fact. Actually, this song in particular always makes me think of another Arthur Clarke work, Rendezvous with Rama - the connection is so strong in my mind that after it came up on shuffle the other day I stopped by the library and checked the book out to read again. It covers some of the same thematic territory as 2001, involving first contact with an alien intelligence through an encounter with a large geometric artifact. A film version directed by David Fincher has been in development hell for the better part of a decade - it'd make a supremely cool movie, with the caveat that the characters, like most of Clarke's creations, are bare wisps of human beings, and would of necessity get a shitload of fleshing out which would threaten to overwhelm the rest of the story.