Following the success of its 1974 predecessor Autobahn, an album based on Germany's eponymous motorway network,[5] Kraftwerk embarked on a tour of the United States with the "classic" lineup of the band formed by Ralf Hütter, Florian Schneider, Karl Bartos—who joined in February 1975—and Wolfgang Flür in April and May 1975.

For this album, the band had decided to record some vocals in English and Schult's command of the language after studying for a while in the United States was better than Hutter's or Schneider's.

[6] By 1975, Hütter and Schneider's previous publishing deals with Capriccio Music and Star Musik Studio of Hamburg had expired.

Also, the album was the first to bear the fruit of Kling Klang as an established vanity label under the group's new licensing deal with EMI.

[26] Uncut wrote regarding their 2009 remaster that it "begins like a heartbeat in the void, accelerating into the pulse that will form the spine of the title-song, an eerie tribute to the intangibles (music, disintegrating atoms) that linger in the atmosphere."

It consider that "has a musty scent of Old Europe, which proved a hit with the synth groups of 1980-81 (eg, Ultravox and Visage), and it retains a blood-chilling, Wagnerian quality even now, thanks to Kraftwerk's use of the Vako Orchestron, a choir-like relative of the Mellotron.

[17] In a retrospective review, Jason Ankeny from AllMusic called the album "a pivotal record in the group's continuing development" and stated that it "marked Kraftwerk's return to more obtuse territory, extensively utilizing static, oscillators, and even Cage-like moments of silence".