Kraftwerk
Trans-Europe Express

"We do not belong to anyone, we are a well-organized form of anarchy, like music, after all, a well-organized form of noise" (Ralf Hutter).

In '77 the four from Dusseldorf brought their artistic philosophy of the musical worker to its full completion, a musician no longer as a star or genius and dissolute, but as a genuine worker of sound, an entity between the man (the musician) and the machine (the instrumentation, the technology), merging with the machine and becoming one, a semi-human being, a new entity born from the industrial age. Ralf Hutter, Florian Schneider, Karl Bartos, and Wolfgang Flur in the '70s revolutionized not only electronic music but the very concept of "consumer" music. Hutter and Schneider, students of Stockhausen at his study center in Cologne during the '60s, and graduated from the conservatory, spent the early '70s perfecting and studying their future approach to electronic sound. The first fruit of their years of study and research, carried out with their initial transient records, was the 1974's "Autobahn," an epochal work of fusion between electronic research and melodic construction. The same goes for the subsequent "Radio-Activity," imbued with atmospheres between synthetic-melodic perfection and research, especially through largely homemade electronic instrumentation, patented by the musicians themselves.

With "Trans-Europe Express," the definitive work of the "power station" takes shape. The music of Kraftwerk has always maintained a strong European melodic identity. Beneath the icy and metronomic perfection of their sound lies a neoclassical spirit deeply rooted in the German tradition. Even in the lyrics, the work embraces modernity and tradition, in the same unity that binds man and machine. The music creates the same union between modern technology and homage to old Europe. The high-speed train as a symbol of progress and technological advancement, the odes to Europe as a symbol of classical tradition, the bright and uniform scenarios of "Europe Endless" create fluid and lush melodic landscapes, expanded by the metronomic beat of synthetic percussion. The voice, detached, declares, "Europe endless, life is eternal (...) elegance and decadence Europe endless," in a succession of almost baroque arias created by synthesizers. The brooding gloom of "The Hall Of Mirrors" spreads coldly like a layer of thick fog, the atmospheres reach a hypnotic stasis, the melodies become dark and nocturnal, icy and minimal, with an intimate text sung by Hutter in his usual robotic tone.

In the full punk era, Kraftwerk were already projected forward, towards the future, unconcerned with current trends, they presented their approach to electronic music that would influence thousands of musicians and currents to come, from technopop, industrial, electro, house to techno. The insistent and mechanical beats that chase each other in an intoxicating expanse of decadent synthetic chants reach the sublime of "Showroom Dummies" and immerse themselves in post-industrial and technological scenarios, inhabited by mannequins gaining life and awareness of their new human nature. Machines become humanized and humans mechanized, one of the central elements of Kraftwerk's futurist poetics. The four German robots, at the peak of their inspiration, aimed for the formal perfection of their music. Their electronics combined song form and the quest for pop melodic clarity with electronic experimentation of the avant-garde of past decades, thus forming a new sound, a hybrid as strange (for the time) as it is dazzling and ahead of its time. The title track has now entered history, known worldwide, even by those who know Kraftwerk only by name or a little more. In 1948, the father of musique concrète, the Frenchman Pierre Schaeffer, composed the first ever piece of musique concrète: "Etude Aux Chemins De Fer," manipulating and arranging the advance of a running train. In '77, Kraftwerk reinvented, modernized, and constructed an epochal suite on this rhythmic theme. The pounding and geometric rhythmic clangs truly seem to come from cold rails. Opened by a majestic and resonant melody of synths and supported by pounding rhythms, "Trans-Europe Express" is the definitive realization of Kraftwerk's electronic art, with a sparse, fascinating, and emblematic text, and its main melody that leaves one breathless for its impetuous and tempestuous beauty, "Metal On Metal" is the second part of the suite, more focused on rhythm and "mathematical" noise of the industrial school.

"Franz Schubert": the title says it all, the four robots pay homage to the great German classical composer with a wonderfully melancholic and neoclassical synthetic gem, splendid and perfect melodies drawing landscapes of a Europe suspended between past and present, and when in "Endless Endless" an inhuman and artificial voice appears for a few seconds, an ultra-modern train speeds towards the future, passing through valleys and infinite fields golden in the sun.