TRANS-EUROPA EXPRESS (Poland, 1991?)
Mateos 91159


So, another Polish pirate cassette today, but it's not The Mix this time!

Poland, as indicated on this blog before, is the one country that has produced the highest number of different Kraftwerk cassettes. Polish copyright law, or possibly lack of law enforcement, made it easy to make a limited run of cassettes without contacting the legal owners, and there are dozens of different labels that have put out one or more Kraftwerk cassettes. Sometimes, it's just a version of one of the albums, other times it's something more elaborate, including "greatest hits" type compilations. Most releases will have some special design feature setting them apart from their competitors. 


Another feature I have began to regard as typically Polish, is that they will often have tampered with the tracklist in one way ot another, mostly to bring the playing time down to standard length. Rather than present the buyer with one casette side longer than the other, they'd use a shorter cassette and skip one track on the CD. (I have seen Polish cassettes with "bonus tracks" too, but that's for another time!)


On this one, they left out Schaufensterpuppen. Oh, I forgot to say: Many Polish editions have the German-language version of the albums, and this is one example. The omission makes sense, if you look at the programming: On the original LP, the first side is much longer than the second. The B-side is 19 minutes and a bit, and the two first tracks of side A are nearly 18 minutes.

 
The design on the front faithfully reproduces the German original LP cover, in black and white, with some mildly dizzying red, yellow and silver to liven it up a bit. The colour theme is replicated through many of the label's releases, so if you want a matching George Michael or Cliff Richard release, they're out there. Blank cassettes have white on-body print, and again it says nothing about what's actually on the cassette, just the label name and some other information (about the quality of the cassette itself I suppose). 







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