#256 - Kraftwerk - Trans Europe Express (1977)
MUSIC HISTORY COMPILED BY ADAM BERNARD:
BACKGROUND – KRAFTWERK
Kraftwerk(Translates to "power station" in German) is an electronic band formed in Düsseldorf in 1970 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. The group began as part of West Germany's experimental krautrock scene in the early 1970s before fully embracing electronic instrumentation, including synthesizers, drum machines, and vocoders. Wolfgang Flür joined the band in 1974 and Karl Bartos in 1975, expanding the band to a quartet.
Florian Schneider (flutes, synthesizers, violin) and Ralf Hütter (organ, synthesizers) met as students at a music school in Germany in the late 1960s, participating in the German experimental music and art scene of the time, which later became known as Krautrock. They joined a quintet known as Organisation, which released one album in 1970, and split shortly thereafter. Schneider became interested in synthesizers, deciding to acquire one in 1970. While visiting an exhibition in their hometown about visual artists Gilbert and George, they see "two men wearing suits and ties, claiming to bring art into everyday life. The same year, Hütter and Schneider started bringing everyday life into art and form Kraftwerk". The band released two free-form experimental rock albums, Kraftwerk (1970) and Kraftwerk 2 (1972). The albums were mostly exploratory musical improvisations played on a variety of traditional instruments including guitar, bass, drums, organ, flute, and violin. Post-production modifications to these recordings were used to distort the sound of the instruments, particularly audio-tape manipulation and multiple dubbings of one instrument on the same track. Both albums are purely instrumental. Next up was Ralf und Florian released in 1973, Kraftwerk began to rely more heavily on synthesizers and drum machines. Although almost entirely instrumental, the album marks Kraftwerk's first use of the vocoder, which became one of its musical signatures. According to English music journalist Simon Reynolds, Kraftwerk were influenced by what he called the "adrenalized insurgency" of Detroit artists of the late '60s MC5 and the Stooges.
The release of Autobahn in 1974 saw Kraftwerk moving away from the sound of its first three albums. Hütter and Schneider had invested in newer technology, helping give Kraftwerk a newer, "disciplined" sound. After the commercial success of Autobahn in the US, where it peaked at number 5 in the Billboard Top LPs & Tapes, Hütter and Schneider invested in updating their studio, thus lessening their reliance on outside producers. The year 1975 saw a turning point in Kraftwerk's live shows. With some financial support, they were able to undertake a tour to promote the Autobahn album, which took them to the US, Canada and the UK for the first time. After the tour, Kraftwerk began work on a follow-up album, Radio-Activity. After further investment in new equipment, the Kling Klang Studio became a fully working recording studio. The group used the central theme in radio communication, which had become enhanced on their last tour of the United States. Even though Radio-Activity was less commercially successful than Autobahn in the UK and United States, the album served to open up the European market for Kraftwerk, earning them a gold disc in France. During the tour for Radio-Activity, the band began to make performance rules such as not to be drunk on stage or at parties. Karl Bartos wrote about these rules, stating that "it's not easy to turn knobs on a synthesizer if you are drunk or full of drugs. We always tried to keep very aware of what we were doing while acting in public." During this tour, early melodies that would later evolve into the song "Showroom Dummies" were being performed. With the releases of Autobahn and Radio-Activity, Kraftwerk left behind avant-garde experimentation and moved towards the electronic pop tunes for which they are best known. In mid-1976, Kraftwerk began to work on the album which was then called Europe Endless. Producer Paul Alessandrini suggested that Kraftwerk write a song about the Trans Europ Express to reflect their electronic music style. That leads us to today's album
In May 1978 Kraftwerk released The Man-Machine, recorded at the Kling Klang Studio. In May 1981 they followed that up with Computer World. Much of the time between 1978 and 1981 was spent modifying the studio to make it portable so the band could take it on tour. Some of the electronic vocals on Computer World were generated using a Texas Instruments language translator. After the release of Eletric Cafe in 1986, the band took a break from live touring, but resumed in the 1990s. In August 2003 the band released Tour de France Soundtracks, its first album of new material since Electric Café. In January and February 2003, before the release of the album, the band started the extensive Minimum-Maximum world tour, using four customized Sony VAIO laptop computers, effectively leaving the entire Kling Klang studio at home in Germany. The group also obtained a new set of transparent video panels to replace its four large projection screens. This greatly streamlined the running of all of the group's sequencing, sound-generating, and visual-display software. From this point, the band's equipment increasingly reduced manual playing, replacing it with interactive control of sequencing equipment, continuing their reputation for being at the forefront of musical technology both in the studio and on the road.
Band member Wolfgang Flur explains, "All of us in the group are children who were born straight after World War Two. So, we had no musical or pop culture of our own, there was nothing behind us 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. So, I think it was in us, ever since we were born; I cannot explain us, but it is us. It is romantic, childish, maybe, it is naive, but I cannot do anything about it. It's in me." Ralf Hütter has also listed the Beach Boys as a major influence. The group was also inspired by the funk music of James Brown and, later, punk rock.
In 2014, the Recording Academy honored Kraftwerk with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. They later won the Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronic Album with their live album 3-D The Catalogue (2017) at the 2018 ceremony. In 2021, Kraftwerk was inducted into the RnR HOF in the early influence category. KRAFTWERK sold over 612,00 albums, including 400,000 in the United Kingdom. The best-selling album by KRAFTWERK is AUTOBAHN, which sold over 160,000 copies.
Kraftwerk have been recognized as pioneers of electronic music as well as subgenres such as electropop, art pop, house music, synth-pop and electronic rock. According to music journalist Neil McCormick, Kraftwerk might be "the most influential group in pop history". Kraftwerk's musical style and image can be heard and seen in 1980s synth-pop groups such as Gary Numan, Ultravox, and Depeche Mode. Depeche Mode's composer Martin Gore said: "For anyone of our generation involved in electronic music, Kraftwerk were the godfathers". Daniel Miller, founder of Mute Records, purchased the vocoder used by Kraftwerk in their early albums, comparing it to owning "the guitar Jimi Hendrix used on 'Purple Haze'
Kraftwerk also had an influence on hip hop. Most notably, "Trans Europe Express" and "Numbers" were interpolated into "Planet Rock" by Afrika Bambaataa & the Soul Sonic Force, one of the earliest hip-hop/electro hits. Kraftwerk helped ignite the New York electro-movement. Techno was created by three musicians from Detroit, often referred to as the 'Belleville three' (Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson & Derrick May), who fused the repetitive melodies of Kraftwerk with funk rhythms. The Belleville three were heavily influenced by Kraftwerk and their sounds because Kraftwerk's sounds appealed to the middle-class black people residing in Detroit at this time.
ALBUM BACKGROUND – TRANS EUROPE EXPRESS
The sound Kraftwerk explored in Trans-Europe Express could be best described as “electronic blues”. It saw the group refine their melodic electronic style, with a focus on sequenced rhythms, minimalism, and occasionally manipulated vocals using vocoders and Votrax speech synthesizers. Trans-Europe Express has had an everlasting impact on music and has been included on multiple all-time lists. Widely considered innovators and pioneers of electronic music, Kraftwerk were among the first successful acts to popularize the genre. Their minimalist, yet futuristic recordings were also frequently sampled in hip hop songs, from Afrikaa Bambaataa to Jay-Z.