I think if I’d been reading the text instead of listening to it, some of the German words and phrases would have made it a more difficult read. Sometimes there was repetition of phrases and ideas, where I felt that nothing new was being said. The perspective of the author was quite unusual, as both a fan of Kraftwerk and an academic.

In summary, this book will help you to appreciate Kraftwerk’s music and legacy. There isn’t a huge amount of detail about how the music was actually produced and the author doesn’t dwell upon the band members’ personal lives, but it’s a good read if you are interested in the art and intention behind the music.

Published by Penguin, 2018.

Talk Talk – The Colour of Spring. Talk Talk’s third album crossed over from synths to more natural sounds. As with anything by Talk Talk, the whole record is a sonic delight, with even the silences perfectly arranged. It has a different energy to their previous two albums and paves the way for the next.

Depeche Mode – Black Celebration. A popular fan-favourite despite not having any chart-busting singles, Depeche Mode’s fifth album has a warm, almost claustrophobic atmosphere, which ought to be at odds with the industrial sounds. It’s also interesting for the innovation and use of sampling.

Crowded House – Crowded House. Their debut album has a little Split Enz mania mixed in with an exuberant rock-pop sound. ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ is of course the stand-out track, among fierce contenders such as ‘Something So Strong’, ‘World Where You Live’ and ‘Mean To Me’.

Kraftwerk – Electric Café (aka Techno Pop). The ninth album from the pioneering group is cool in both senses of the word. Although its appeal is not as immediate as, say, The Man-Machine, the more you listen, the more you like it. The themes are telephones and electro-pop itself.

Being the music nerd that I am, I pondered the links between these bands and albums, but the only ones I’m certain about are that Kraftwerk and Talk Talk were influences on Depeche Mode and that Electric Café was mixed by François Kevorkian, who would later work on DM’s Violator. We’re left with some mere coincidences: Black Celebration and Crowded House both have songs with ‘world’ in the title, Black Celebration and The Colour of Spring both have songs with ‘time’ in the title, and that Black Celebration has the song ‘Fly on the Windscreen’ while The Colour of Spring has moths (not flies) on the cover artwork.

Books:

• The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit is about three children who move from their comfortable house to the countryside when their father is wrongly imprisoned. The railway becomes an important part of their lives. The book was adapted into a wonderful film.
• Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett is a Discworld novel which sees Moist von Lipwig – who has already reluctantly reorganised the Mint and the Post Office of Ankh-Morpork – taking on the railway. I have only read it once but I plan to re-read.
• The Harry Potter books by J K Rowling have some important scenes set on the Hogwarts Express, the old-fashioned steam train which takes students from London to Scotland. It’s interesting that the train, a Muggle invention, was appropriated by the wizarding world. West Coast Railways supplied the train for the films.
• The Railhead trilogy by Philip Reeve is set in the far future, when sentient trains cross the galaxy, with stations on every planet. Even though the trains are so advanced and are beings with their own personalities, there is still a romance to the railway.

Songs:

• Trans Europe Express by Kraftwerk is an album which explores European travel, most notably the title song which celebrates the rail service which linked several countries. You can see the group enjoying a train journey in the music video.
• ‘Shunt’ by Recoil, which closes the album Unsound Methods, begins slow and menacing, evoking a train beginning its journey, perhaps through a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Then the pace speeds up until it sounds like the train is going so fast it might be out of control. The lyrics: ‘There’s blood on the line.’
• ‘Blue Piccadilly’ by The Feeling, from the album 12 Stops and Home, is a break-up song which refers to the Piccadilly tube line. The image on the album cover is a little bit like a ride on the Underground, but with house keys and a soft-boiled egg.
• ‘Steam’ by Peter Gabriel is not exactly about trains but the video is absolutely mad and includes a steam train with Peter’s face on it (screenshot below). Although, if he really was a steam train, he wouldn’t be singing ‘give me steam’ – he’d be singing ‘give me water’. But then it wouldn’t rhyme with ‘dream’.

Film/TV:

• ‘Mummy on the Orient Express’ is episode 8 of series 8 of Doctor Who. On the Orient Express – in space – a mummy appears only to its victims, who have 66 seconds to live. My favourite Doctor (Peter Capaldi) along with Clara (Jenna Coleman) and chief engineer Perkins (Frank Skinner) have to solve the mystery.
• In the ‘Bambi’ episode of The Young Ones, Vyvyan, Rik, Mike and Neil use good old British Rail to travel to their appearance on University Challenge. We find out why you shouldn’t stick your head out of the window of a moving train. The train is also held up by Mexican bandits.
• Chigley – from the creator of Camberwick Green and Trumpton, Gordon Murray – includes this song: ‘Time flies by when I’m the driver of a train / And I ride on the footplate there and back again / Under bridges over bridges to our destination / Puffing through the countryside there’s so much to be seen.’
• Sliding Doors is an unusual rom-com in which a split-second difference – which leads to Gwyneth Paltrow’s character missing the tube in one timeline, and catching it in the other – gives us two parallel universes. I really like the film and have seen it at least three times.

Do you have any favourite train-based media? Do you like trains? Let me know!

1. The Robots. ‘We’re functioning automatic / And we are dancing mechanic / We are the robots / We are the robots.’ Guaranteed to stay in my head all day, the robots are singing about how they are there to serve us, a tune filled with bleeps and other typically robotic noises. There’s a bit of Russian through a vocoder, which somehow makes it even cooler.
2. Spacelab. That epic space sound is captured perfectly in this track. There aren’t any lyrics except for ‘space lab’ repeated occasionally. It begins with a kind of launch, getting faster and higher-pitched until the main theme kicks in. Somehow it manages to convey that sense of both awe and loneliness which I associate with outer space.
3. Metropolis. The synths on this one remind me of old video game soundtracks (although of course it would really be the other way round). This one has a sort of ennui yet busyness which conveys the production-line feel of workers in a city, a nod to the Fritz Lang film Metropolis. The only lyric is the word ‘metropolis’ repeated.
4. The Model. ‘She’s a model and she’s looking good / I’d like to take her home that’s understood / She plays hard to get, she smiles from time to time / It only takes a camera to change her mind.’ Definitely a pop song, this is one of Kraftwerk’s most famous. I’ve always thought the ‘model’ to refer to a product, like the robots, and not an actual woman.
5. Neon Lights. ‘Neon lights / Shimmering neon lights / And at the fall of night / This city’s made of lights.’ A little slower-paced, this is a deceptively simple song which suggests how beautiful the urban landscape can be. There are some synth notes which shimmer to match the lyrics. It’s literally the lighter side of living in a metropolis.
6. The Man-Machine. ‘Man Machine, pseudo human being / Man Machine, super human being.’ In the closing track, we’re with the robots again for a relentless mechanical-sounding tune. Bleeps, whirrings and a walking-pace rhythm suggest an army of robots quietly poised to take over the world. Who is superior – humans, or the super-humans they engineer?

My favourite is The Robots (check out the amusing, slightly sinister video), followed by Spacelab and Neon Lights.

Check out the previous posts in this series: The Beatles – Revolver and Simon and Garfunkel – Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.