Trans-Europe Express (album) - Music

Music

Wolfgang Flür has stated Kraftwerk were influenced by 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". 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." 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". Kraftwerk believed critics in the United Kingdom and 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 Europ Express could be used to symbolize this. 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. Slant Magazine described the album as a "a sonic poem to Europe".

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". 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". 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. Hütter and Schneider have described the song as auto-biographical. The third track "Show Room 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". 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 countdown of "eins zwei drei vier" as a parody of the band Ramones who started some songs with a quick countdown of "one two three four". 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". 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". The song's lyrics reference the album Station to Station and meeting with musicians Iggy Pop and David Bowie. Hütter and Schneider had previously met up with Bowie in Germany and were flattered with the attention they received from him. 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.