Kraftwerk Trans-Europe Express by: Steve Scully Mon:23-Apr-07 Label: Year: 1977 WB rating 58 out of 100

Trans-Europe Express is pretty much as ‘landmark’ as a record can get. As much of a concept album as Tommy, as ground-breaking in music production as the likes of OK Computer, and easily as influential as both of these albums, this record was a dramatic leap-forward in the realms of music technology. To put it simply, on Trans-Europe Express electronica was born; the legacy of Kraftwerk’s four strikingly dorky characters is heard every day via the electro-pop of radio stations; the techno remixes of clubs and the retro-rock revival of the smoke-hazy bars.

Trans-Europe Express is a landmark album, to be sure, but only on the basis that, from it, so much else has spawned. Ultimately, it was a work of pioneers into a previously-unpopular, unthinkable form of music; a triumph in terms of pushing the boundaries of form, little more than mediocre when it comes to actual substance.

After 1974’s Autobahn adopted the contrasting feelings of anxiety and ennui facing drivers on the high speed roadways, the band approached another form of mass-transport to develop the theme for this record: the train. This train is used to link the European continent, as the cosmopolitan mess of Europe is explored by the opening track, ‘Europe Endless’ – illustrating through repetitious beats and minimalist lyricism the vastness of the continent – and further addressed in ‘Trans-Europe Express’, a document of travel from Paris, to Vienna, to Dusseldorf. While the scope of such a connected European vision is outside the experience of a secluded nation like Australia, essentially the album is relatable as a soundtrack to travel and as a critique of modern western culture – the beats mingling with the sounds of industrial engines, mimicking each other. 

It is the concept behind the form that is the most interesting aspect of this journey. Kraftwerk criticise the moral/ethical decline of the modern world – a descent into the superficial and commercial – by using technology, the exact tool leading the demise in standards. Through Kraftwerk’s handiwork, music was thrown on to a radical tangent. In their employment of artifice – the electronic reproduction of sounds both natural and man-made – the band took music from the hands of the traditional musicians, making music more of a craft, to be systematically produced, than an art. Electronic beats, on Trans-Europe Express, serve rhythmic purpose, as well as a wider, more metaphorical purpose of propelling the listener through this record like the train they imitate. Similarly, the distortion of the human voice acts to further de-humanise the musicians, identifying the music as the central concern, not the musicians.

As you may have guessed by now Kraftwerk’s approach seems a mess of hypocrisy, mostly deliberate I’m sure, all acting to loosen the strict, conventional concepts of music, musicianship and instrumentation. Kraftwerk offered many questions in their search for a radical form, concerns about living, about national identity and about the relationship between art and life, pre-empting many musical revolutions that both simplified and complicated form, and trivialised or amplified musical and lyrical substance.

But as deep and profound as Kraftwerk’s vision may be, and as innovative and ingenious as they are as artists, there is little here that reveals anything new in terms of songwriting. Sure, Trans-Europe Express transgressed the boundaries when it came to ‘how’ to create music, but the music they created is a little tedious.

‘The Hall of Mirrors’ and ‘Showroom Dummies’ are perhaps the most initially likable and easily accessible tunes on the record. ‘The Hall of Mirrors’ is a retelling of the Narcissus myth in a modern context: “He fell in love with the image of himself/And suddenly the picture was distorted.” The echoing beats, synth riff and haunting chorus melody give this track a sinister edge; the descent into the selfish world of modern, commercial society told through the guise of a young man who, “made up the person he wanted to be,” the critique is taken further to emphasise the loss of ‘self’ in the search for individuality: “even the greatest stars/change themselves in the looking-glass.” ‘The Hall of Mirrors’ is undoubtedly the best song on Trans-Europe Express, and offers the album’s most resounding message in a simple and accessible way, both lyrically and musically. Whatever “the looking-glass” is, whether it’s a reference to Lewis Carroll or not, Kraftwerk use it as a means by which we measure reality.

‘Showroom Dummies’ is a similarly heavy-handed criticism of consumerism. While the message of the song is its most striking feature, the instrumentation, when viewed in context, seems to have sent waves through modern music culture. The heavy beats and simple single-note synth riffs are an ancestor of modern techno/dance music, prophesied in the lyrics themselves: “We go into a club/Then we start to dance.” Kraftwerk saw the same problem with their contemporaries as so many critics nowadays: the club culture and the superficial, physically and chemically-altered youth under fire today as it was in 1977.

‘Trans-Europe Express’ takes us “station to station”, nation to nation, driven by the artificial engine of electronic rhythms. Such a wide theme, however, does little to lift a track which is at best tedious, at worst painfully repetitious. Dynamics seem a foreign concept to Kraftwerk, as they recreate the tedium of long-distance travel to a tee. After moving seamlessly into the subsequent ‘Metal on Metal’, the train comes to a screeching halt – signified by sampling the sound of an actual train.

In ‘Franz Schubert’, faux-strings emerge over the synthesised loop in an attempt to create the feel of re-invention. This is by far the most blatant example of Kraftwerk’s attempt to recreate the concept of popular music and redefine its boundaries. Sonically quite pleasing, this penultimate track shows variation in melody, but again proves that while thematically admirable, the ‘train’ idea seems to have led to a lack of engaging and inventive songwriting.

Despite its influential status, Trans-Europe Express was an exercise in experimentation with mixed results. While their vision is superbly recognised, and the message behind the album is thought-provoking and sometimes profound, there is often the uneasy sensation that as the album is as ‘endless’ as Kraftwerk perceive Europe to be; drawn-out and seemingly indistinct structurally. For every touch of brilliance spawned for Kraftwerk – the influence they’ve had on today’s great rock bands is clear – there’s a sinister side-effect, like the emergence of the instrument of evil, the Vocoder and the legacy of pop techno. Listen to this record and be educated in musical history, but for all its laudatory reviews, Trans-Europe Express is just an idea from which so much else has developed: a raw, simple idea, now sadly and painfully anachronistic.