There are very few bands that can claim to occupy as influential a position in modern music as Dusseldorf's Kraftwerk¹. Certainly no band as influential as they are can ever have recorded less music. Since the release of the seminal Autobahn in 1972, the band has released a mere 6 albums of original material. The last album released by them was in 1991, a collection of reworkings of their old material, The Mix. Their last album of original material was 1986's Electric Café. Since then the band has shed half it's members (percussionists Karl Bartos and Wolfgang Flur), failed to complete a major world tour and been involved in a rather large public scandal over the amount of money paid to them by the German Government for their jingle for Expo 2000 in Hanover. It had long been assumed by many that there would never be a new collection of Kraftwerk material, so the announcement of the imminent release of an album to coincide with the centenary of the Tour De France came as both a surprise and a delight to their fans.

Philosophically, little appears to have changed for Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider since 1986. Soundtracks continues the duo's fascination with travel, and also with the continued mixing of the human race and technology - the bicycle in many ways being the ultimate blend of man and machine. And the opening tracks 'Tour De France Etapes 1,2 and 3' (all of which feature the same lyrics) concentrate on the technical side of broadcasting the Tour De France to the world;

• Radio Tour-Information
• Transmission Television
• Reportage sur Moto
• Camera Video et foto

Musically, however, there appears to have been some re-arranging of the furniture at the groups Kling Klang studio. Both Electric Café and The Mix showed signs of a band that was somewhat confused as to its place in the modern pop market. Wolfgang Flur in particular stated that he felt The Mix album was an attempt to position Kraftwerk into a dance market that they had effectively started but could not compete in, and that the bands trademark melodies had been sacrificed for a more urgent, rhythm lead sound.

Soundtracks, however, appears to be a back tracking of sorts. The rhythms are softer, less insistent than on both of the bands previous albums, and the melodies have returned. Indeed, the album one is most consistently reminded of whilst listening to Soundtracks is the bands 1977 eulogy to European unity, Trans Europe Express.

It is impossible to know what has lead to this rethinking by the band, but it may be significant that long time studio engineer Fritz Hilpert is listed as co-writer for some 75% of the album. Many had feared that in the absence of Bartos or Flur to move things along, Hutter and Schneider would be unable to shake their perfectionist ways enough to actually produce new product. Not only has Hilpert added a vital 'moving component' to the band, he appears to have given Hutter and Schneider back some sense of joy in their own music, for the most noticeable thing about this album is that after the somewhat sterile exercise of The Mix and the dry Electric Café, some sense of the bands early wit and sense of fun is returning to them.

The two standout tracks on the album are proof of this. 'Vitamin' is a song entirely about just that, vitamins. Surely no other band could produce a song about vitamins on an album that celebrates possibly the most drug frenzied sporting event in the world. Certainly no other band could do it with such a poker face as Kraftwerk. 'Elektro Kardiogramm' on the other hand, sees them using the same sort of playful sampling techniques that they had used to record Autobahn, thirty years ago - a sampled heart beat and the sound of heavy breathing form the back bone of an insistent rhythm track.

Elsewhere, the album is a mixture of old and new techniques and sounds. Long-term Kraftwerk listeners will recognize some samples from older tracks, most noticeably a series of notes and sound effects from Trans Europe Express. The opening five tracks of the album² also hark back to Trans Europe Express' title track, creating as they do one expanded piece of music with symphonic like changing motifs and rhythms - it is the first time since then that the classical training of Hutter and Schneider has been so clearly evident.

In design terms, too, the album looks to be a step backwards, using as it does a minimally altered version of the cover for the bands original 'Tour De France' single from 1983. There is a newly recorded version of that famous song included here as well, updated with a middle eight that features sampled ratchets and whirring gears. The inside cover of the CD sleeve features the now traditional Kraftwerk transmitting aerial yet, on this occasion, it is the Eiffel Tower transmitting radio waves across the globe.

Kraftwerk may no longer sound, as they once did, like the sound of the world in 25 years time. Tour De France Soundtracks is not an album that sounds like what rock critic once described as 'a postcard from the future'. What it does sound and feel like, however, is an album made by a band that have re-discovered the joy of their own music. If that is the case then we might not have to wait 17 years for the next one, which on the strength of this album would be a good thing indeed.

Perhaps the most telling thing about the quality of this album is that it made me, at least, want to get on a bike and follow the Tour De France.

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