Electric Cafe

Where the album fails is that it lacks a real stand-out track to lend it focus: imagine The Man Machine without The Model smack in the middle, or Computer World without Computer Love and you get the idea – it all tends to drift. It doesn’t help that side one (the first three tracks) is virtually instrumental, so the songs don’t kick in until side two. Ironically, they did have a killer track that could have unified the album: Tour De France, released as a single three years earlier and supposedly the lynch-pin of their subsequently abandoned 1983 album, Techno-Pop (in fact the 1984 remix by Francois Kervorkian – available along with the original on the 1999 Tour De France CD single – would have slotted in on Electric Café a treat).

I won’t bore you with a critique of the music. Buy Trans-Europe Express, The Man Machine, Computer World, Tour De France (single) and Electric Café and you have their classic period (77-86) complete. The early albums are good but hardly techno-pop. When you hear the phrase “godfathers of techno” or “they invented dance music/trance/house/garage (delete where applicable),” it's down to these works.

The best track bar one is the title track itself. With its multitude of vocal instruments, it provides a lush background, a strange melody and funny stuttering sample effects and multi-language vocal snippets that you'll find on almost all of the tracks on this album. Basic in theme, it simply intones a catalogue of everything that's good and groovy (or bad and cheesy, if you like) about modern times. Art, food, politics, music, and the atomic age all get a mention.

Second best bar one are the first three tracks: "Boing Boom Tschak", "Technopop" and "Musique Non Stop". It contains mostly rhythm and vocal samples with as little melody as possible. It has a theme that encompasses the whole of Kraftwerk's career, in that every sound you hear is music and every sound inspires you. Wherever you go you will hear music, even if it's simply the clanging of metal girders, or the repetitive sound of an industrial machine ("industrial rhythms all around", and in the Spanish lyrics, "music will bring new ideas and will continue forever"). It really is music non-stop.

"Sex Object" conforms to the rigidly sequenced style of the first three tracks. It has an extremely bland vocal track from Ralf, but you can't help thinking that it's meant to be that way as it tells the story of a sexual relationship that is totally devoid of any emotion. The lyrics are not specific, so you can take this as a homosexual relationship as easily as a heterosexual one. This track comes last of all of the tracks in terms of quality, but it's not bad. It's just not quite as good as the others.

And the one I keep barring? "The Telephone Call". The only Kraftwerk track where Karl gets to strut his vocal stuff is the highlight of the album. His voice could not be more different to Ralf's. Human-sounding and warm; it makes a welcome contrast. It tells the story of a man who is obsessed with somebody's voice, and constantly tries to hear it on the phone. But is it a real person he tries to call, or is he simply infatuated with a recorded message?

Budding recording engineers should listen to this track and be humble, because it doesn't get any better than this. Every voice, every sound, every instrument has its own place and space in the stereo field. It fairly boggles the mind, and considering it was 1986 when this album finally came out, it's a rare achievement that still stands up to this day.

How anyone can say that Kraftwerk had run out of ideas with this album is a mystery to me. There are so many ways to twist the lyrics that it's really a fun album.

Sadly, it does mark the last good work from the "four". It's all downhill from here.