Kraftwerk - Trans Europa Express

Would this album convince the casual listener nowadays that Kraftwerk were a truly great band within the electronic genre and massively influential throughout music? Probably not without close listening. The album sounds quite sparse, efficient and clean (rather like Düsseldorf Railway Station and the bands sober dress sense at the time) but beyond this is attention to detail, lyrical irony and a transcendent 'feel' of German optimism married to deceptively simple and catchy melodies / refrains. Futuristic, European and Human, lovely!

The LP that defined Kraftwerk on a global scale, and one that had a seismic effect on the world's dancefloors, if only by proxy. Trans Europe Express followed on the back of the haunting and somewhat melancholic Radioactivity and propelled them from being pastoral Teutons to being progenitors of the robopop sound whilst all the time retaining a unique perspective on popular music and culture that makes them the most influential and compelling act of the last 30 years. This LP is arguably Kraftwerk's finest, combining an expressive romanticism outlined in the majestic "Europe Endless" with the sort of dancefloor nous in "Metal on Metal" that defined the band from then on.

The fact that this LP is primarily about a train journey adds to its cultural weight, as railway journeys within a literary context often are seen as metaphors for change. Whilst Trans Europe Express didn't effect anything overnight, it makes a compelling case , like most of Kraftwerk's LPs for laying the seed for much of what we listen to today.