September 22nd, 1978 saw the release of the KRAFTWERK single NEON LIGHTS / TRANS-EUROPE EXPRESS / THE MODEL on Capitol Records.
The late 1970s proved a prolific period for Kraftwerk, gaining widespead recognition and some celebrity fans along the way with their classic LP trilogy Radio-Activity, Trans Europe Express and The Man Machine.
“In 1975, David Bowie, having just completed the Young Americans LP and on a scarily creative roll, spent most of his time driving around Germany in a Mercedes listening to Autobahn and very little else,” wrote John McCready, for The Independent in 1997.
“So obsessed, legend has it, that he virtually begged Karftwerk to work with him. It apparently took them some time to return his calls. Karftwerk had already proved themselves light years ahead with the unique Trans-Europe Express, in which they namecheck their famous fan.”
Wir laufen 'rein in Düsseldorf City
Und treffen Iggy Pop und David Bowie
Trans Europa Express
In Trans-Europe Express, Kraftwerk helped to change the pop landscape forever. In 1976, as the group began to work on their sixth studio album, a friend and associate Paul Alessandrini recommended that they visit Le Train Bleu in Paris’s Gare de Lyon, a restaurant that offered a scenic view of trains leaving for the south, Italy, Switzerland and the Middle East.
“With the kind of music you do”, Alessandrini told Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider as they dined, “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.”
Borne from an ode to a transport hub serving Europe, the album was a communication-centred vision.
“Kraftwerk structured the album around the concept of a train moving across a continent that was rapidly becoming borderless and digital,” continued John McCready.
“The album glimmers into motion with 'Europe Endless', a flowing, glowing hymn to the "real life and postcard views" of the Old World. The beats are crisp, the synths lush and percussive, and the track shines like a pre-emptive elegy for history as we know it. The eerie 'Showroom Dummies' is both richly melodic and formally fresh; the tune is driven by a cybernetic hand-clap sound that's heavier than most Zeppelin riffs. When the infamous, haunting melody of the title track segues into 'Metal on Metal', you hear the clacking sound of a train, which morphs into a Morse-code synth riff before the song returns to the original angst-ridden motif.”
“Conceptually, Kraftwerk were as prophetic as Orwell; musically, they helped jump-start hip-hop with an electro shock and set the stage for techno, especially after Afrika Bambaataa borrowed the melody of 'Trans-Europe Express' for his 1982 smash, 'Planet Rock'. One of their inheritors, techno king Carl Craig, probably said it best: "They were so stiff they were funky."”
“Alan Vega of electronic punks Suicide (themselves steeped in the influence of Kraftwerk) describes driving through Harlem in the late 1970s and hearing their music bleeding out of tenement blocks."
"While doing nothing more than pleasing themselves, Kraftwerk laid the roots of several revolutions. A whole school of European industrialists like Front 242 took the metal-On-metal sections of Trans-Europe Express to forge a scary new shop-floor sound. American dance producers like Arthur Baker were transfixed by the effortless binary funk that characterised other sections of the record. Kraftwerk, like perhaps only the Beatles before them, had proved themselves a truly influential group.”
Rendezvous on Champs-Élysées
Leave Paris in the morning on TEE
Trans-Europe Express
Trans-Europe Express
Trans-Europe Express
Trans-Europe Express
In Vienna we sit in a late-night café
Straight connection, TEE
Trans-Europe Express
Trans-Europe Express
Trans-Europe Express
Trans-Europe Express
From station to station back to Düsseldorf City
Meet Iggy Pop and David Bowie
Trans-Europe Express
Trans-Europe Express
Trans-Europe Express
Trans-Europe Express
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發表於 2020-9-22 22:13:37
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