Production
After the release and tour for the album Radio-Activity, Kraftwerk continued to move further away from their earlier Krautrock style of improvised instrumental music, refining their work more into the format of melodic electronic songs. 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 that 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. In mid-1976, Kraftwerk began to work on the album which was then called Europe Endless. Paul Alessandrini suggested that Kraftwerk write a song about the Trans-Europe Express to reflect their electronic music style. Hütter and Schneider met with musicians David Bowie and Iggy Pop prior to recording which influenced song lyrics. Maxime Schmitt encouraged the group to record a French language version of the song "Showroom Dummies" which led the group to later record several songs in French. The album was recorded at Kling Klang Studio in Düsseldorf. Artistic control over the songs was strictly in the hands of members Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider with Bartos and Wolfgang Flür contributing sequenced electronic percussion. Kraftwerk went to train bridges to listen to the sounds the train would actually produce. The group found the sound the train made was not danceable and changed it slightly.
An important piece of new equipment used on the album was the Synthanorma Sequenzer, a customized 32-step 16-channel analogue sequencer made for the band by Matten & Wiechers. This allowed the construction of more elaborate sequenced synthesizer lines, which are featured prominently in the tracks "Europe Endless", "Franz Schubert" and "Endless Endless", 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. After recording the album in Düsseldorf, Hütter and Schneider visited Los Angeles to mix the tracks at the Record Plant Studio. 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.
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. 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 is shown on the American album cover. 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.
Read more about this topic: Trans-Europe Express (album)
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