Kraftwerk Remastered - Part Three

The words great and masterpiece are used so often where good would suffice that they have become almost devalued as the currency of choice for reviewers, in this case however their use pays the dues of this reviewer in full. This is the most accessible, the most commercial sounding and the most beautifully constructed of all Kraftwerk's albums.

The album, like its predecessor, is a concept. Unlike Radio-Activity however which was about the nuclear industry and science this album is about a train journey that unites Europe. This is the album to hand to your Euro sceptic friend and say ,"Look, this is what the power of a union can do." Alternatively you can hand it to them and say, "Listen, this is the sound of a band at the peak of its collective powers."

On a personal level this album, in CD version, is what the CD player was invented for. When I was younger I yearned (if that's not too an emotive description) for a way of playing albums continuously without having to get up and walk to the record player to turn the disc over. This thought wasn't relevant for most albums, simply because in the old days of vinyl albums were generally constructed to follow a well-worn (with good reason) formula. Even today it's possible to tell where the original Side One ended on vinyl whilst listening to the CD version. There are exceptions however, hence my teenage yearnings: Jeff Wayne's War Of The Worlds, The Who's Quadrophenia, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of The Moon and Kraftwerk's Trans Europe Express. There may be others but those four albums all have one thing in common, they can be repeated without their being any break in the continuity of the musical experience. In the case of TEE the journey in audio terms relates to a railway journey across Europe from Paris to Berlin. Anyway, enough of my application for Pseuds Corner, on with the review.

Just as Radio-Activity had pushed back musical boundaries with its use of the Vako Orchestron keyboard so Trans Europe Express (TEE) pushed them a little further with the introduction of the Synthorama Synthesiser, a custom made instrument which allows notes to be preprogrammed rather than have a human being stand at a keyboard playing the same notes over and over again. It is the use of this that makes it possible for the album to be played on a 'loop' for as long as you want without deviating from the listening experience.

The original vinyl album consisted of three tracks on Side One with the four track suite on Side Two. Where the CD remaster deviates from the original release is that on Side Two the original track Metal on Metal has been shortened to allow for the inclusion of the track Abzug.

Side One opens with Europe Endless a song that contains only twenty words and yet conveys more in those few words than some albums do and that's due to the sparseness and beauty of the arrangement of this track. If this album is a metaphor for a journey then this track starts the journey in style, no cries of "Are we there yet?" from the rugrats in the back. The simple melody that kicks things off, and later comes back to close the album, is Mozartian in it's simplicity and brilliance. After seventy five seconds the synthesised choir kicks in followed by the bass synthesiser and then we're off.

"Europe Endless, Europe Endless," repeated by Ralf Hutter and the computer before those wonderful opening lines, "Life is Timeless, Europe Endless." See I told you this was the perfect gift for the Euro sceptic! Hutter and Florian Schneider's work on the Synthanorma Sequenzer and Votrax voice synthesiser take this track to places electronic music hadn't visited before (no pun intended). They are dutifully backed by Karl Bartos and Wolfgang Flur who help drive this track down the line for nine and a half minutes.

It's a source of wonder to me that when those '20 Driving Classics' CD's appear each year just befoer Father's Day that Europe Endless doesn't feature, it's a darn sight better than numerous tracks by blokes in tight trousers and seriously misguided haircuts wailing (as Cassandra in Waynes World would put it). Perhaps Kraftwerk have stricter licensing morals than some artists.

The Hall of Mirrors and Showroom Dummies stand out from the other tracks on this album like a sore thumb for the simple reason that they are pop songs rather than electro-rock, Krautrock or volkpunk or whatever it is that Kraftwerk are referred to. Despite being thirty-two years old the track The Hall of Mirrors could have been written last week about the obsession of today's media with celebrity and the desire of certain celebrities to always be in the media eye however sordid the reason, Katie Price being a classic example of somebody who needs the oxygen of good or bad publicity to exist. The lines:

"Sometimes he saw his real face and sometimes a stranger in his place

Even the greatest stars find their face in the looking glass."

That couplet is an example of what lies within this brilliant study of the narcissistic nature of success and stardom, the desire for publicity and confirmation that you are who you think you are. Taking the 'looking glass' as a metaphor for tabloid journalism the line:

"Even the greatest stars fix their face in the looking glass."

Could have been written by Max Clifford or Simon Cowell as part of a treatise on how to manipulate the media to achieve your goals whilst at the same time staying "true to yourself."

Showroom Dummies was written as a tongue-in-cheek response to a comment made in a review of a gig on their 1975 tour that they looked like showroom dummies. Once again the boys show that Germans do have a sense of humour and it's purely coincidental that they begin the song with a piss-take of the Ramones famous, "One, two, three, four," introduction with their own deadpan, "Eine, Zwei, Drei, Vier." The song comes complete with the sound of breaking glass after two minutes as the 'dummies' step out and take a walk through the city. I can't help thinking that Gary Numan's move from punk to dystopian, Sci-Fi influenced, electronica was inspired by this one track.

This album has earned it's place at the top of the Kraftwerk cannon for most of the groups fans because of Side Two of the vinyl release. The tracks: Trans Europe Express, Metal on Metal, (Abzug the new inclusion) and Franz Schubert forming a suite that sees each track merge into the next without a break. Part of the credit for this suite goes to the Paul Alessandrini a French journalist who suggested to the group that there music sounded like an electronic version of the blues and was therefore suited to the concept of a journey. He encouraged them to stand near railway tracks when trains were passing to hear the similarity between the sound of metal on metal with those sounds their instruments were producing.

For anybody interested in the relationships between the band members and what was influencing the band when the ideas behind this album started to form there's an interview with Paul Alessandrini here from 1976.

Trans Europe Express, is the bands masterpiece, an aural wonderland and this track is at the heart of it. The journey from Paris, rendezvousing on the Champs Elysees, via late night Vienna, to Berlin where the band meet David Bowie and Iggy Pop. Bowie of course had been in Berlin with Brian Eno during the period working on his 'Berlin Trilogy' of albums (Low, Heroes and Lodger). Bowie was clearly influenced by Kraftwerk on those three albums, even calling the opening track on Side Two of Heroes "V-2 Schneider," an instrumental track that showcased Bowie's growing interest in a more 'industrial' sound of recording. Having dug out Bowie's limited edition album 'All Saints (Collected Instrumentals 1977-1999)' it's failry obvious that Bowie took Kraftwerk to heart during 1976-1977, the title track of his collection could have appeared on this Kraftwerk album on its follow-up: The Man Machine, without anybody noticing any difference.

In one of life's great ironies, this track was also partly responsible for the birth of dance music thanks to the sampling of this track by Afrika Bambaataa on 'Planet Rock.'

After 6:35 the title track gives way to Metal on Metal and you hardly notice the train passing over the points. This track, as the title suggests, is more industrial, almost industrial-funk, it reminds me of the sort of sounds Einsturzende Neubauten would later use with great effect during their career culminating with one of their most commercial tracks Alles wieder offen some 27 years into their career!

Anyway enough of 'E.N' back to Kraftwerk's meisterwerk. At just after two minutes and ten seconds we enter the track Abzug and a melody that sounds like it was lifted two decades or so later by House of Pain for their hit Jump Around. The track closes with the sound of a train braking, as far as I can tell it's the genuine article not a synthesised recreation.

Franz Schubert brings the melody full circle. Schubert died in 1828 so he missed the opening of the first railway line in Germany (between Nuremberg and Furth) by some seven years, nevertheless this is a fitting tribute to the father of German melody and harmonic writing. For the first three and a half minutes or so the track is a very simple melody played over and over again before it gently sweeps towards something bigger before closing and making way for the final fifty five seconds of the album which is a reprise of the opening track, this time called Endless Endless. The track slowly fades into the distance like the sound after a train journey has finished. If you have your CD set on 'repeat' however' you are just in time to make that connection for the next train.

Gute Fahrt as they say in Germany.

If you've reached this far down the review well done! I know it's a long post but this is a classic album. Here's the video for Trans-Europe Express