NEU!: Neu! (1972) + Neu! 2 (1973) + Neu!' 75 (1975)

 

Neu! (pronounced [nɔʏ]; German for "New!"; styled in block capitals) were a West German krautrock

band formed in Düsseldorf in 1971 by Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother following their departure from Kraftwerk. The group's albums were produced by Conny Plank, who has been regarded as the group's "hidden member". They released three albums in their initial incarnation—Neu! (1972), Neu! 2 (1973), and Neu! 75 (1975)—before disbanding in 1975. They briefly reunited in the mid-1980s.
                        

One of the key groups to come out of the Krautrock scene of the 1970s, Neu! embraced both driving, repetitive rhythms and euphoric ambience, breaking rock music down into a form that was wild,

exploratory, and elemental. Although Neu! had minimal commercial success during their existence, the band are retrospectively considered a central act of West Germany's 1970s krautrock movement. They are known for pioneering the "motorik" beat, a minimalist rhythm associated with krautrock artists. (Motorik is the 4/4 beat often used by, and heavily associated with, krautrock bands).  Their work has exerted a widespread influence on genres such as electronica and punk.
                  

Drummer Klaus Dinger and guitarist Michael Rother were active players in Germany's small but interconnected circles of experimental musicians, both playing in early lineups of Kraftwerk before starting Neu! and maintaining various other projects throughout the band's existence, but what they

created together stood apart from their other groups and what many of their peers were doing at the time. The band was short-lived, working in fits and starts between 1971 and 1975 (and reuniting briefly in the mid-'80s for some ill-fated studio sessions), but their sound was groundbreaking and hugely influential. With the assistance of producer Conny Plank, Neu! created several albums that defined the driving, motorik rhythmic approach of a certain sect of Krautrock, and also predicted aspects of punk, remix-based music, and electronica that would be refined and revisited in the decades that followed.
                     

The band's eponymous first album sold just 30,000 records, yet is today considered a masterpiece by

many, including influential artists such as David Bowie, Brian Eno, Iggy Pop and Thom Yorke of Radiohead. It included the Motorik benchmark tracks "Hallogallo" and "Negativland" (the band Negativland took their name from this track), and bizarre "songs" like "Sonderangebot".
                    

Neu! spent a significant chunk of their advance for the next album on new instruments, so much so that they ran out of money midway through the recording of it. When the label refused to front them any

more funds, the band completed 1973's Neu! 2 by inventing one of the earliest forms of remixing, filling out the second side of the album with various slowed-down, sped-up, or otherwise manipulated versions of their already released songs "Neuschnee" and "Super." Shortly after the release of Neu! 2, Rother formed a new project, Harmonia, with the members of Cluster, and focused his attention there for much of the next few years.
                         

When Rother and Dinger reconvened in the studio in late 1974, their respective visions for Neu! had split. They agreed to approach their third album, Neu! '75, accordingly, with the first side consisting of three songs by the original duo, played in a similar style to their other albums, and side two made up of

tracks with Dinger on guitar and lead vocals, joined by Hans Lampe and his brother Thomas on dual drum kits. While the album was received by the record-buying public as another strange chapter in Neu!'s never-straightforward trajectory, Neu! '75, too, had a substantial impact on other musicians. Neu! disbanded after the release of the album, with Rother continuing on with Harmonia as well as releasing multiple solo albums and Dinger forming new outfit La Düsseldorf with the same lineup of dual drummers that played on the second side of Neu! '75.
                         

While Neu! was relatively short-lived and both players remained active in music long after the band broke up, the sound they achieved on their early albums would inform multiple arenas of boundary-

pushing music that followed. Neu!'s combination of fearless experimentation and playful offhandedness can be heard throughout a wide range of electronic music subgenres, and their collision of textural guitar and synth sounds with charged rhythms would inform wave after wave of independent rock music on the whole. The formula Neu! created would be modified to various degrees by subsequent eras of college rock bands, space rock and home-recording artists, abstract noise musicians, and several generations of indie rock.
                      

                     

NEU! - NEU!  1972

                           

On "Hallogallo", which opens the disc, the listener encounters a timeless rock & roll sound world. The driving guitar playing one chord in different cadences and rhythmic patters, the four-snare to the floor pulse with a high hat and bass drum for ballast, and a bassline that is used more for keeping the drummer on time than as a rhythm instrument in its own right.  The tense ambient soundscape of

"Sonderangebot" balances things a bit before the slower-than-Neil Young "Weissensee" opens with a subtle industrial clamor and opens up into a lyrical exploration of distorted slide guitar aesthetics with an uncharacteristic drum elegance that keeps the guitar in check. "Im Glück" tracks a restrained, droning path through the textural palette of the guitar, treated with whispering distortion and echo. All hell breaks loose again on Dinger's "Negativland" as an industrial soundscape eventually gives way to a bass and guitar squall as darkly enticing as anything on Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures.
                            

                      
It's really obvious now how the JD's sound was influenced by this simply and darkly delicious brew of noise, bass throb, percussive hypnosis, and an oddly placed, strangely under-mixed, guitar. Rother's

style had as much to do with not playing as it did with virtuosity, and his fills of open chords, stuttered cadences, and broken syntax provided a much-needed diversion for the metronymic regularity of the rhythm section. Rother didn't riff; he painted a mix with whatever was necessary to get the point across. His mannerisms here are not to draw attention to himself, but rather to that numbing, incessant rhythm provided wondrously by Dinger. Neu!'s debut album was driving music for the apocalypse in 1971.
            

Neu! – Neu!
Label: Germanofon – 941025
Format: CD, Album, Reissue, Unofficial Release    
Released: 1994
Genre: Electronic
Style: Krautrock

TRACKS

                        

01. Hallogallo    10:07
02. Sonderangebot    4:50
03. Weissensee    6:42

JAHRESUBERBLICK            

04. Im Glück    6:52
05. Negativland    9:46
06. Lieber Honig    7:15

LINE - UP

Drums, Guitar, Vocals, Banjo [Japan] – Klaus Dinger
Guitar, Guitar [Dehgitarre], Bass, Double Bass [Streichbass] – Michael Rother

NOTES

Originally released in 1972.
Recorded over 4 nights at the beginning of December 1971 in Windrose Studios, Hamburg.
Mixed 3 days later in Ralf Arnie's Star Music Studio, Hamburg.

Flac Size: 398 MB

NEU! - NEU 2  1973

          

After the considerable success of their self-titled debut album, Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother set out ambitiously to record a follow-up. Virtually everything went wrong. The first of the artistic and personal differences that existed between them not only began to surface, but to flourish in the face of a

nearly impossible studio deadline and overly tight budget. While the basic Neu! sound was not an issue, how to augment it was. As both a guitarist and a composer, Rother had already begun moving in the direction he would end up in with Moebius and Rodelius in Harmonia, and on his later solo recordings: a more unified, melodic, airy, and soaring sound that was full of light and yearning. Dinger, on the other hand, was looking for more anarchy, more chaos, and rock & roll dynamics. He wanted a music that was as dramatic and confrontational as he was. It's amazing this album turned out as well as it did.
                

The disc opens with one of the band's greatest tracks, the stunning "Forever." Guitar, feedback, pulse, and distortion equals motorik, the brand name for Neu! music. Rother's playing huge chords here, spun out of effects boxes and feedback squalls, and Dinger's drumming adds a tom-tom to the metronome of snare and hi-hat. The chords are darker, minor key flourishes added to a one-note bass throb. From here

it gets abstract; nocturnal ambient soundscapes with no discernable instrumentation except for a warped drum palette to keep the big swathes of white noise company ("Spitzenqualitat" & "Gedenkminute") A guitar joins the sonic investigation on "Lilac Angel" as well as a pounded out drumbeat and a growled Dinger vocal. This must have been Neu!'s idea of a hard rock single. But side two is where things get strange. Having exhausted their budge they turned to re-releasing material in manipulated fashion. Needles dropping on records, playback roughs, backwards tape manipulation sped up or slowed down interminably, all with the unmistakable Neu! sound as a base.
                    

"Super" and "Neueschnee" are played back at various speeds. There is another track that concludes with a cassette tape being eaten by a player. This is one of the more out-there sides in the history of recorded

music -- the dark side of the optimism presented by Pink Floyd's Meddle...without half the effort! Over time, this great big middle finger to the music biz has weathered the storm very well. In fact, it now sounds as if it were recorded this way based on aesthetics rather than anger. But at the time it merely showed a duo that had worn each other out and had been dissed by their record company. A fine and disturbing listen, it should be sought out by anyone possessing Neu! discs on either end of this one. This is essential Krautrock.
                   

Neu! – Neu! 2
Label: EMI Electrola – 7243 5 30781 2 6, Grönland Records  
Format: CD, Album, Reissue, Remastered, Stereo 2001
Country: UK & Europe
Released: 1973    
Genre: Rock
Style: Krautrock

TRACKS

              

01. Für Immer (Forever)    11:17
02. Spitzenqualität    3:35
03. Gedenkminute (Für A + K)    2:06
04. Lila Engel (Lilac Angel)    4:37
05. Neuschnee 78    2:32
06. Super 16    3:39
07. Neuschnee    4:07
08. Cassetto    1:48
09. Super 78    1:36
10. Hallo Excentrico!    3:44
11. Super    3:11

LINE - UP

Klaus Dinger - Banjo [Japanbanjo], Guitar [11 Sait. Gitarre], Percussion, Electric Piano [Farfisa Piano], Bandoneon [Bandonion], Voice [Stimmen], Electronics [Elektronik], Turntables [Plattenspieler]
Michael Rother - Guitar, Bass, Piano, Guitar [Deh-gitarre], Violin, Zither, Percussion, Electronics [Elektronik], Tape [Cassettenrecorder]

Flac Size: 378 MB

NEU! - NEU!' 75  1975

             

After a three-year break, Neu! members Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother buried their differences

temporarily, and reunited for another go at the "motorik" sound they had developed with their debut in 1971. The strange tension and presentation of Neu! 2 and the emergence of their former band Kraftwerk may have precipitated the reunion, but, whatever the reason, the end result proved worth the time, effort, and bickering it took to crank this one out. One thing that is noticeably different on 75 is the presence of synthesizers and the preference of them, it seems, over Rother's guitar.
           

This is music not only for traveling, from one place to the next, but also for disappearance into the ether

at a steady pace. This may have been Neu!'s final statement -- at least in the studio; Dinger issued (without Rother's permission) an inferior live '72 album -- but at least they went out on a much higher note than Neu! 2, and in a place where their innovations are still being not only recognized, but utilized.
                  

Neu! – Neu! '75
Label: EMI Germanofon – 941030
Format: CD, Album, Reissue 1994
Country: UK
Released: 1975
Genre: Rock
Style: Krautrock

TRACKS

               

01. Isi    5:00
02. See Land    6:57
03. Leb' Wohl    8:51
04. Hero    6:15
05. E-Musik    9:57
06. After Eight    4:42

LINE - UP

Drums – Hans Lampe (tracks: 4 to 6), Thomas Dinger (tracks: 4 to 6)
Guitar, Piano, Voice, Written-By – Klaus Dinger, Michael Rother
Percussion, Organ – Klaus Dinger
Synthesizer, Electronics – Michael Rother

Flac Size: 361 MB