Trans-Europe Express (album)
Trans-Europe Express (German: Trans Europa Express) is the sixth studio album by German band Kraftwerk. Recorded in 1976 in Düsseldorf, Germany, the album was released in March 1977 on Kling Klang Records. It saw the group refine their melodic electronic style, with a focus on sequenced rhythms, minimalism, and occasionally manipulated vocals. The themes include celebrations of the titular European railway service and Europe as a whole, and meditations on the disparities between reality and appearance.
Trans-Europe Express
Trans-Europe Express charted at 119 on the American charts and was ranked number 30 in The Village Voice's 1977 Pazz & Jop critics' poll. Two singles were released: "Trans-Europe Express" and "Showroom Dummies". The album has been re-released in several formats and continues to receive acclaim. In 2014, the Los Angeles Times called it "the most important pop album of the last 40 years".[2]
Recording[edit]
An important piece of new equipment used on the album was the Synthanorma Sequenzer, a customized 32-step 16-channel analog sequencer made for the band by Matten & Wiechers.[9][10][11][12][13] This allowed the construction of more elaborate sequenced synthesizer lines, which are featured prominently in the tracks "Franz Schubert" and "Endless Endless",[14][15] and liberated the player from the chore of playing repetitive keyboard patterns.
Whereas Radio-Activity had featured a mixture of German and English lyrics throughout the album, Trans-Europe Express went further and was mixed as two entirely separate versions, one sung in English, the other in German. At the recommendation of Maxime Schmitt, a French version of the song "Showroom Dummies", titled "Les Mannequins", was also recorded. "Les Mannequins" was the group's first song in French and would influence decisions to record songs in French on later albums.[5] After recording the album in Düsseldorf, Hütter and Schneider visited Los Angeles to mix the tracks at the Record Plant Studio.[6] Elements of the mixing sessions that were done in Los Angeles were dropped from the album, including the use of more upfront vocals in order to do more mixing in Düsseldorf and Hamburg later.[16][17]
Artwork[edit]
The artwork for the album cover of Trans-Europe Express was originally going to be a monochrome picture of the group reflected in a series of mirrors. This idea was dropped for a photo by New York-based celebrity photographer Maurice Seymour, with the group dressed in suits to resemble mannequins.[18] J. Stara's image of the group was taken in Paris and is a highly retouched photo-montage of Kraftwerk from their shoulders up again posed as mannequins which are shown on the cover of the English version of the album.[18][19] On the inside sleeve, a color collage of the group sitting at a small cafe table designed by Emil Schult was used. The photo for this scene was from the session by Maurice Seymour, taken on the group's American tour. Other photos were taken by Schult that show the group laughing and smiling. These were not used for the album's release.[19]
Composition[edit]
Wolfgang Flür has stated Kraftwerk were influenced by the music of the Weimar Germany era: "we were children who were born straight after World War Two ... we had no musical or pop culture of our own ... there was the war, and before the war we had only the German folk music. In the 1920s or 1930s melodies were developed and these became culture that we worked from".[20] Karl Bartos also spoke of post-war influence as the group thought that they "had this development in the 1920s which was very, very strong and was audio visual. We had the Bauhaus school before the war and then after the war we had tremendous people like Karlheinz Stockhausen and the development of the classical and the electronic classical. This was very strong and it all happened very close to Düsseldorf in Cologne and all the great composers at that time came there."[8] Paul Alessandrini is credited for helping contribute to the album's concept. Alessandrini told Hütter and Schneider that "with the kind of music you do, which is kind of like an electronic blues, railway stations and trains are very important in your universe, you should do a song about the Trans Europe Express".[21] Kraftwerk believed critics in the United Kingdom and the United States associated them with Nazi Germany, with tracks such as "Autobahn" inextricably linked with the Nazis who built the high-speed roads in the 1930s and 1940s. At the same time, the band were keen to move away from their German heritage towards a new sense of European identity and felt that the Trans-Europe Express could be used to symbolize this.[8] AllMusic referred to Trans-Europe Express as a concept album with two different themes. The first being the disparities between reality and image, represented by the songs "Hall of Mirrors" and "Showroom Dummies", and the others about the glorification of Europe.[22] Slant Magazine described the album as "a sonic poem to Europe".[23]
The musical style of Trans-Europe Express was described by AllMusic as melodic themes which are "repeated often and occasionally interwoven over deliberate, chugging beats, sometimes with manipulated vocals" and "minimalism, mechanized rhythms, and crafted, catchy melodies".[22] The music has been categorized as electronic pop,[2] synth-pop,[24] and experimental pop.[25] Hütter has commented on the minimalist nature of the album, stating that "If we can convey an idea with one or two notes, it is better than to play a hundred or so notes".[21] The first side of Trans-Europe Express has three songs. The song "Hall of Mirrors" has been described as containing deadpan vocals with lyrics that speculate how stars look at themselves in a looking glass.[5] Hütter and Schneider have described the song as autobiographical.[5] The third track "Showroom Dummies" was described by AllMusic as "bouncily melodic in a way that most of Trans-Europe Express isn't" and with lyrics which are "slightly paranoid".[26] The idea for the song came from Flür and Bartos being compared to showroom dummies in a British concert review. Some versions of the song contain a spoken introduction starting with a count-in of "eins zwei drei vier" as a parody of the band Ramones who started some songs with a quick count-in of "one two three four".[5] The second side of Trans-Europe Express is a suite with "Trans-Europe Express" continuing through to "Metal on Metal" and "Franz Schubert" before closing with a brief reiteration of the main theme from "Europe Endless".[27] AllMusic described the musical elements of the suite as having a haunting theme with "deadpan chanting of the title phrase" which is "slowly layered over that rhythmic base in much the same way that the earlier "Autobahn" was constructed".[27] The song's lyrics reference the album Station to Station and meeting with musicians Iggy Pop and David Bowie.[28] Hütter and Schneider had previously met up with Bowie in Germany and were flattered by the attention they received from him.[29] Ralf Hütter was interested in Bowie's work as he had been working with Iggy Pop, who was the former lead singer of The Stooges; one of Hütter's favorite groups.[30]
Release[edit]
Trans-Europe Express was originally released in March 1977.[31] With the help of Günther Fröhling, Kraftwerk made a promotional music video for the song "Trans-Europe Express". The video features the group wearing long coats on a train trip from Düsseldorf to nearby Duisburg. Photo stills from this video were later used on the single sleeve for "Showroom Dummies".[28] Fröhling would work with Kraftwerk again on their album The Man-Machine doing the photography for the album cover.[32] To promote the album to the press in France, EMI Records hired a train with old-fashioned carriages from the 1930s to travel from Paris to Rheims while the songs from the album were played over the train's announcement system for the critics.[7]
In October 2009, a remastered edition of the album was released by EMI in Germany, Mute Records in the European Union and Astralwerks in the United States.[33][34][35][36] This re-release was available on compact disc, digital download, and vinyl and features a different album cover from previous versions of the album. This new version features a black background with a white Trans Europ Express train in the center.[37] The track listing on the 2009 re-release amends the titles of the songs to match the original German release. This change has "Metal on Metal" being credited for two minutes of the music with the remainder being a track titled "Abzug" (English: "Departure").[38][39]
Commercial performance[edit]
Trans-Europe Express charted higher in the United States than Kraftwerk's previous album Radio-Activity by peaking at number 117 on the Billboard Top LPs & Tapes chart.[92][93] "Trans-Europe Express" and "Showroom Dummies" were released as singles from the album.[94] "Trans-Europe Express" charted on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1977 where it peaked at number 67.[92] Trans-Europe Express began charting in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. The album entered the charts on 6 February 1982, staying in the charts for seven weeks and peaking at number 49.[95] The re-released single for "Showroom Dummies" (a remix with additional drums) entered the charts on 20 February 1982, staying on the charts for five weeks and peaking at number 25.[96]
Notes