Electric Café

Infobox Album |
Name = Electric Café
Type = Album
Artist = Kraftwerk


Background = Orange
Released = December 1986
Recorded = 1982–1986
Genre = Electronic music
Synthpop
Length = 35:38
Label = Kling Klang
EMI
Warner Bros. flagicon|USA flagicon|Canada
Producer = Ralf Hütter
Florian Schneider
Reviews =
* Allmusic Rating|3|5 [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=Agekzikp6bb69 link]
* "Q" Rating|2|5 [http://www.q4music.com/nav?page=q4music.artist.review&fixture_review=126693&fixture_artist=145614 Aug. 1995] |
Last album = "Computer World"
(1981)
This album = "Electric Café"
(1986)
Next album = "The Mix"
(1991)

"Electric Café" is a music album by the group Kraftwerk. It is somewhat infamous for taking the band almost half a decade to produce; work is said to have begun on the album as early as 1982 (with the working titles of "Technicolor" and then "Techno Pop"), but the project was delayed due to band member Ralf Hütter suffering a near-fatal cycling accident, and then due to concerns within the band that the production quality of the album was not sufficiently cutting-edge, necessitating much re-work. The album, mastered by Bob Ludwig, finally saw release in 1986.

The album was initially released in English and German, including a limited "Edicion Española" release which featured the songs, "Techno Pop" and "Sex Object" in Spanish language versions. It was the first Kraftwerk LP to be created using predominantly digital musical instruments, although the finished product was still recorded onto analog master tapes.

The first side of the album is instrumental without proper singing parts, relying instead on repeated spoken phrases. The side is divided into three tracks, but they may be taken to be one long piece of three variations with recurring elements. For instance, a few bars of melody from "Musique Non-Stop" can be heard as a few bars of bass melody in "Techno Pop". The second side also contains three songs, following a somewhat more conventional pop format. The song "The Telephone Call" (German version: "Der Telefon Anruf") is notable for being the first and only Kraftwerk song to feature Karl Bartos on lead vocals. The album closes with the title track "Electric Café", featuring French language lyrics. Even if not one of the best known Kraftwerk songs, the track gained some notoriety in the US, when it was used slightly sped up as the theme song for "Sprockets", the German television spoof by Mike Myers on "Saturday Night Live".

Audiences generally appeared to find the music somewhat more sterile and less engaging than that of its conceptually more cohesive predecessor, "Computer World". Compared to the band's four preceding albums, some critics have pointed to the lack of a strong and sufficiently intriguing theme to tie the "Electric Café" material together. Furthermore the near half-decade hiatus in the band's record releases and performance activity lost them crucial momentum in their career. Whatever the possible influence of these factors, "Electric Café" did not meet with any great commercial success.

Two singles were released from the album, "Musique Non-Stop" and "The Telephone Call". Both were accompanied by promotional videos. Though both singles went to #1 on the Billboard dance chart in 1987, neither of the singles performed well in the general pop charts. However, "Musique Non-Stop" has been the closing piece of Kraftwerk's concerts ever since. In the early 1990s, a completely different version of "Musique Non-Stop" – slower and more melodic – was used extensively as a jingle on the MTV Europe channel. Earlier, MTV Europe had already included elements from the original song and the video in the title graphics for MTV's Greatest Hits.

The video for "Musique Non-Stop", created in 1986, is notable in itself for showcasing a computer animated representation of the band. The animation, [http://www.rebeccaallen.com/v1/work/work.php?ID=1] which was complex for its time, was created by Rebecca Allen, using state-of-the-art facial animation software developed by the Institute of Technology in New York. The slow rate of the album's progress, combined with rapid changes in software animation, meant that Allen had to archive the animation program developed at the Institute of Technology until Hütter and Schneider were ready in 1986, to travel to New York to edit the images to the final version of "Musique Non-Stop".

Although the album was originally released by Warner Bros. Records in the US and Canada, it has since been reissued in these regions by Elektra Records, following the acquisition of the group's catalog by the label in 1988. Some initial copies of the Compact Disc edition were reissued with the Warner Bros. logo printed on the artwork and the Elektra logo on the disc itself.

The ‘lost’ "Techno Pop" album

Much speculation has taken place over the years as to whether a ‘lost’ Kraftwerk album (i.e. unreleased songs/recordings) exists from the four year period between 1982 and 1986. Kraftwerk are notoriously secretive about their activities, but a fairly reliable and consistent picture can be gleaned from interviews given by the various band members.

s of the songs "Techno Pop" and "Sex Object" claiming to be demos from these early sessions have been circulated over the years, with a noticeably different production sound to the final album. The authenticity of these demos has not been verified.

The initial track listing for Techno Pop was the following:

1) Techno Pop (which would have taken up side one of the LP)
2) The Telephone Call
3) Sex Object
4) Tour de France

Recordings were progressing, and one song from these sessions, "Tour de France" was released as a single in 1983, achieving moderate commercial success. However, shortly after this, Ralf Hütter suffered a serious cycling accident, leaving him in a coma, and unable to work with the band for at least six months.

EMI Records had announced a release date for the "Techno Pop" album; promotional advertisements were released and official catalog numbers were assigned to the project. However, the band were unable to complete the project in time. Instead, "Autobahn" was reissued in 1985 in a "digitally remixed" ["sic"] edition that subsequently marked the album's transition to Compact Disc the following year. By this time, Hütter & Schneider had regained the rights to the recording, after their original contract with Philips Records had expired.

When work did recommence on the sessions, the band were reportedly concerned that the album's production was not of a sufficiently ground-breaking quality to match their reputation as sonic innovators. The final mix of the album was completely redone from scratch at least once, Hütter eventually travelling to New York with the master tapes to work on them with producer François Kevorkian. The recordings did not see release until 1986, by which time the title had changed again, to "Electric Café". The band had decided not to include the song "Tour de France", but instead to leave it as a stand-alone single: it had already been reissued in 1984, when Kevorkian had auditioned his production skills with a largely instrumental remix of the song.

At various times, Hütter, Bartos, and Flür have each stated in interviews that there are no unreleased songs from this period, and that all of the original "Technicolor" / "Techno Pop" material was eventually reworked into what can be heard on the finished "Electric Café" album.

In the proposed remastered album collection "The Catalogue", the "Electric Café" album has been renamed "Techno Pop".

Track listing

German release

ide one

#"Boing Boom Tschak" – 2:57
#"Techno Pop" – 7:42
#"Musique Non-Stop" – 5:45

ide two

#"Der Telefon-Anruf" – 8:03
#"Sex Objekt" – 6:51
#"Electric Café" – 4:20

English & Spanish releases

ide one

#"Boing Boom Tschak" – 2:57
#"Techno Pop" – 7:42
#"Musique Non-Stop" – 5:45

ide two

#"The Telephone Call" – 8:03
#"Sex Object" – 6:51
#"Electric Café" – 4:20

Note 1: In Spain the album was released in two versions. One was the regular English/International edition, and the other a local "Edicion Española" version, appearing early in 1987, with Spanish verse lyrics for both "Techno Pop" and "Sex Object" (often mistakenly titled "Objeto Sexual" by discographers). The Spanish-only vinyl album was withdrawn soon afterwards due to a manufacturing error—a several-second complete drop-out of sound during the final track—and has never been reissued on CD. Both versions were also available as a cassette.
Note 2: The song "Sex Object" is absent from the South Korean pressings of the album.

References