Artist: Kraftwerk
Album: Electric Café (aka Techno Pop)
Label: EMI / Warner Bros.
Released: 10 November 1986 (Europe), December 1986 (US)
UK Album Chart: #58 (a bit rude, really)
US Billboard 200: #140 (America was busy with Bon Jovi)
Produced: Kraftwerk
File Under: Robots discover the 80’s and get a bit confused.
🎧 Listening Status
One of those albums I always meant to get round to between Computer World and another doomed diet.
I was more a dabbler than a fan, love The Model and Tour De France. This album completely passed me by as I grooved to The Smiths and New Order in 1986.
Discovered via streaming about 15 years ago and regularly return during a Kraftwerk phase.
💾 Background
By 1986, Kraftwerk were already mythical but not quite the influencers they are today. They’d basically invented half of modern music and then wandered off to ride bikes (Ralph Hütter’s cycling accident delayed the album) and tinker with drum machines in their legendary Kling Klang studio very slowly.
Electric Café arrived late, over-polished, and smack in the middle of the big-hair 80’s — and promptly became “the forgotten one”.
It’s their mid-life crisis record: shorter hair, bigger digital toys, and a faint whiff of “we should probably release something before the synth-pop children eat us alive”.
In 1986, nobody was talking about them as the influencers they were about to become in the 90’s.
The number one smash The Model was but a distant memory. Unsurprisingly, the record sank without trace.
I blame everyone buying Paul Simon’s Graceland and Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet instead.
🔊 The Sound
Some critics accuse the album of being “very 80’s” but I don’t see it this way. To me it sounds quintessentially Kraftwerk.
Though unlike their other classic albums, Electric Café is not electronics in a “wow, futuristic” way, more in a “this could easily soundtrack a BBC Schools programme about microchips” way.
But once you get past the gated reverb and glossy sheen, there’s still plenty of Kraftwerk DNA humming underneath.
“Boing Boom Tschak” sounds exactly like its title — a vocoder having a nervous breakdown in a drum machine factory. It’s ridiculous and strangely hypnotic.
The whole opening sequence (“Boing Boom Tschak” → “Techno Pop” → “Musique Non Stop”) plays like a robot warm-up routine: a bit stiff at first, then gradually grooving into life.
The hypnosis is classic Kraftwerk. I find this album very good when power walking round the local park with our dog, Bowie.
Lead UK single “Musique Non Stop” is the keeper — you can hear the future techno and house scenes peeking through the cracks. Cold, precise, and surprisingly funky for four blokes who look like they’re about to audit your electricity meter.
A disappointing chart placing of number 82 despite the high tech for the day video.
Side two is where things get truly weird and wonderful. “The Telephone Call” is Kraftwerk doing awkward synth-pop romance. It’s almost… cute?
Well, as cute as a song about missed calls and emotional disconnection delivered in deadpan German can be.
Shockingly only made number 89 in the charts when released as a single in early 1987 but by now the album had completely flopped. This is how out of sync Kraftwerk were in the mid 80’s.
I think The Telephone Call is every bit as good, if not better than The Model.
I’ll let you decide!
“Sex Object” is even stranger — part lecture, part sulk, part anti-love song over stiff electro-funk. It shouldn’t work. It sort of doesn’t. And yet I couldn’t stop listening.
⭐ Standout Moments
- “Musique Non Stop” – Pure machine groove. If you only pick one, make it this.
- “The Telephone Call” – Lonely robot seeks connection. Must enjoy ring tones.
- The way the whole album sounds like a training video for a futuristic call centre — in a good, deeply odd way.
🧠 Final Thoughts
Electric Café is not peak Kraftwerk. It won’t change your life like Trans-Europe Express or The Man Machine. But as a glitchy, awkward snapshot of electronic pioneers trying to find their place in the MIDI decade, it’s fascinating.
Think of it as the slightly wonky cousin at the Kraftwerk family reunion: dressed a bit too 80s, telling odd stories, but still unmistakably part of the genius gene pool.
🎵 Sound Bite Summary
- 🤖 Robots vs 80’s production: no clear winner.
- 🎹 Awkward, glossy, occasionally brilliant synth-funk.
- 📞 Best enjoyed after dark with a landline nearby.
- 💾 Reissued under it’s original title Techno Pop in 2009 with an extra track a remix of The Telephone Call titled House Phone.
The Listening Log 
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