The New Music

“NEU!? to me they sound like joy. like endless lines stretching on foreverinparallel.fragile.like a BRandNEWnew motorway and you are the first person to drive along it…” - Thom Yorke, Radiohead

Heavy praise from one of contemporary music’s most respected and innovative minds. But it’s fair to say that without Neu!, Radiohead could very well have remained the band that made Pablo Honey and not the band that made everything after it.

Like The Velvet Underground and The Stooges before them, krautrock legends Neu! were an underappreciated band of their time, and one that wouldn’t receive the reverence they deserved until arguably decades later.

Neu! was formed in 1971 by Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger, after they left their posts as guitarist and drummer, respectively, in Kraftwerk. Eschewing the mechanical arrangements of their previous band, the duo set out to make music that suggested constant motion through Dinger’s driving motorik rhythms and Rother’s sprawling, amorphous soundscapes.

It was during the recording of Neu!’s self-titled debut album that Dinger invented his
“Apache beat,” an ostinato rhythm that has been emulated by thousands of bands over the last 40 years. Despite the influence songs like “Hallogallo” and “Negativland” had, Neu! was considered a commercial disappointment by their label, Brain Records back in 1972. Neu! 2 followed the next year, featuring the band’s opus, the 11-minute“Für Immer.” But the album is remembered more for it’s flipside, which thanks to their label’s refusal to give them more money, inspired Rother and Dinger to remix their own songs – something dancehall emcees in Jamaica were really only doing.

Neu! 75, the third and final album of the band’s first run, saw a divide creeping into the songwriting. Considered a polarizing listen at the time by fans, the album is split into halves, demonstrating Rother’s inclination towards a sound more tranquil and atmospheric, while Dinger favoured a much more belligerent rock style that was borderline punk. Rother and Dinger called it quits shortly after the album’s release.

It would take ten years for the two to get back into a studio together. Over the course of seven months, Rother and Dinger worked on sessions but there was no official release until 1995, when the latter put out something called Neu! 4 in response to a number of bootlegs that had seen unauthorized releases. Rother refused its release and the album was pulled. When Astralwerks launched a reissue campaign of the Neu! albums in 2001, the duo agreed not to include this album.

The influence on modern day music cannot be stressed enough. Aside from the number of krautrock inspired bands jamming it out today, Neu! has played a vital role in the music of David Bowie, Radiohead, Stereolab, Julian Cope, Wilco, Autechre, Broadcast, New Order, OMD, Deerhunter and Tortoise. And just last year, Primal Scream, Sonic Youth, LCD Soundsystem, Oasis and Holy Fuck, among others, contributed songs to a tribute album called Brand Neu!.

Just recently, Michael Rother revived Neu!’s music (Klaus Dinger passed away in 2008), launching a new live act called Hallogallo 2010 with the help of Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley and Tall Firs’ Aaron Mullan. Rother also took on a massive undertaking by compiling and issuing the official, definitive and awesome Neu! vinyl box set. Included in the collection are the first three Neu! albums, but also Neu! ’86, a reworked version of the fourth album, as well as Neu! ‘72, a previously unreleased 18-minute live maxi-single. On top of that comes digital downloads of all the recordings, a 36-page picture book that features snaps of the band by Anton Corbijn, an official Neu! stencil (yes, it’s as awesome as it sounds) and a bright orange Neu! T-shirt.

You can buy the Neu! vinyl box set at the band’s official store, and trust me, it’s worth every penny no matter what you pay.

Check out a great interview with Michael Rother here.