In his autobiography, 'I Was A Robot', ex-Kraftwerk member Wolfgang Flur recalls a time in 1982 when Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, the band's leaders, "would prefer to study bicycle catalogues...rather than thinking up ideas for new songs. The bicycle seemed to have become an alternative to the synthesiser, particularly for Ralf."
In the intervening 20 years, this has become a convenient explanation for Kraftwerk's lack of music. As their reputation solidifies, justifiably, as the founding fathers of electronic pop music, their output has dwindled away, with only a few live shows as evidence that these pathologically secretive men continue to function as a band. Since 1986's mediocre 'Electric Cafe', there has been only a remix album (1991's 'The Mix') and one single (2000's 'Expo 2000').
Stories, meanwhile, have proliferated of Hütter, now in his mid fifties, cycling vast distances every day as if to make his band's fascination with travel (first cars on 'Autobahn', then trains on 'Trans-Europe Express') an integral part of his life. As Flur melodramatically describes a meeting with Hüin 1996: "I could no longer see the artist; instead, I saw the extremely likeable and dynamic face of a sportsman."
If the arrival of a new Kraftwerk album is a surprise, then its subject matter is not. 'Tour De France Soundtracks' is ostensibly an expansion of the 1983 'Tour De France' single, right down to the practically identical artwork. There is a little heavy breathing and accelerated heartbeats (on 'Elektro Kardiogramm'), but mostly the 12 tracks cross flatland quickly, fluently, with little apparent effort. The sweat and grind of mountain stages do not fit into Kraftwerk's worldview of smooth, transformative travel, with their concept of a music which synthesises the idea of constant motion.
An alternative theory as to why Kraftwerk stopped making records is not just that bikes became more appealing, but that music caught up with them. That the '80s boom in house, techno and electropop - all inspired by Kraftwerk, of course - effectively made them redundant. But 'Tour De France Soundtracks' is not a record that could have been made in the mid-'80s. It is scrupulously aware of developments in dance music, if not the most recent ones: the opening suite is most redolent of the trance techno prevalent in early '90s Germany made by Sven Vath, amongst others.
Not quite what we might have hoped for from such historically important innovators. But not quite as bad as it appears, either. Their beats might have been updated ('Vitamin' is improbably funky, a kind of clanking hip-hop), but the defining features of Kraftwerk remain fixed: that stainless, crystalline production; a sense that songs could stretch on forever; simple and beautiful melodies that thread in and out of the rhythms, recurring like symphonic call signs. On 'Elektro Kardiogramm', orchestrated breaths and heartbeats are juxtaposed with a tune purposefully reminiscent of 'The Robots', as if to suggest the band's obsession with man becoming machine is more pronounced than ever.
What spoils it, really, is that the album ends with a retooled version of 1983's 'Tour De France', an astonishing piece of music which throws the weaknesses of the new songs into sharp relief. For 'Tour De France Soundtracks' may be a finely-wrought, impeccably-designed consumer desirable. Certainly, the way it simultaneously implies both speed and serenity is breathtakingly clever and, in a way, rather emotional. But next to the magisterial music they made in the '70s and early-'80s, this is Kraftwerk freewheeling, never really pushing the pace of change. Maybe in 17 years' time, they'll have pulled ahead of the pack once again.
