I just noticed that this year marks the 30th anniversary of the release of both Donna Summer/Giorgio Morodoer’s seminal electronic hit “I Feel Love” and Kraftwerk’s groundbreaking electronic album Trans-Europe Express. It’s interesting in itself that these were released in the same year, but mostly I’m blown away that it was that long ago.
I discovered both of these works somewhat after the fact, but they would rank high on the list of recorded works that had the greatest influence on my aesthetic. I did a cover of “I Feel Love” 10 or so years ago; maybe I should dust off the files and remix it for this anniversary year.
Here’s a rather laughable video of “I Feel Love” with a number of stage musicians that have nothing whatsoever to do with the original music:
No, those synth and drum parts were not played by human hands; and no, there’s no guitar anywhere in the song. At least it’s a decent recording of the music, and of the album version rather than the rudely truncated radio version.
Here’s one of the title track from Trans Europe Express with some cool maybe-at-the-time-futuristic-looking trains and stuff:
The music is an odd version; it sounds like they kind of jammed together pieces from several tracks. I think some of the trains are models, come to think of it. That is the band themselves in the shots; presumably they’re on the actual TEE.
As someone from Germany (actually from Kraftwerk’s home town Düsseldorf) I can confirm they used a model train in some of the shots, the so-called Schienenzeppelin (see english Wikipedia for instance). The train they are sitting in OTOH isn’t a TEE but a normal coach from the 70’s or 80’s. Well, at least it is a 1st class coach.
Not that I wanted to sound like a train addict – which I probably do 😉 – I found your blog while searching for synth info.