The title track has been described as heralding "a new era of experimentalism" for Bowie. "Station to Station" was in two parts: a slow, portentous piano-driven march, introduced by the sound of an approaching train juxtaposed with Earl Slick's agitated guitar feedback, followed by an up-tempo rock/blues section. Berman for "Pitchfork" wrote that "the title track's momentous prog-disco suite [...] charts a course from spiritual void toward ecstatic religious reawakening." In 1999 Bowie told "UNCUT" magazine, "Since Station To Station the hybridization of R&B and electronics had been a goal of mine". Despite the noise of a train in the opening moments, Bowie says that the title refers not so much to railway stations as to the Stations of the Cross, while the line "From Kether to Malkuth" relates to mystical places in the Kabbalah, mixing Christian and Jewish allusions. Fixation with the occult was further evident in such phrases as "white stains", the name of a book of poetry by Aleister Crowley. The lyrics also gave notice of Bowie's recent drug use ("It's not the side effects of the cocaine / I'm thinking that it must be love"). With its krautrock influence, it was the album's clearest foretaste of Bowie's subsequent 'Berlin Trilogy'.