Something about the robotic beats of Showroom Dummies made me think of the Autons from Doctor Who. I checked the dates, and Spearhead From Space was remarkably aired way back in 1970, with the sequel Terror of the Autons in 1971. But this could have been the soundtrack to either of those stories. Rather than shop-window mannequins coming to life and killing people, however, this track was inspired by a review of Kraftwerk themselves and their physical appearance. Something that they decided to go with rather than object.
As with Autobahn, the theme of long-distance European travel crops up again, this time on trains, with the suite of tracks that make up Trans-Europe Express (including Metal On Metal, Abzug, and Franz Schubert) built around an electronic drumbeat that mimics the sound of a train rattling along the tracks. Thanks to modern rail connection methods, you don’t get that sound anymore, but never mind. As might be expected from Kraftwerk, the lyrics are sparse. They mention “Paris in the morning[...] late night cafe in Vienna” as well as “from Station to Station [...] to meet Iggy Pop and David Bowie”.
And, yes, Kraftwerk did meet with the two while they were recording The Idiot and Low, and you can hear the Kraftwerk influence on both those albums, especially Low. Lurking behind so many mid-late Seventies albums like a spider (from Mars), has Bowie become the new version of David Crosby?
The Kraftwerk sound here is very like a precursor to trance music perhaps, while tracks like Hall of Mirrors prefigures Eighties synth-pop from the likes of OMD to Pet Shop Boys. You could probably trace a line of descent to the robot-electronica of Daft Punk too.
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