Neu! - Neu! (1972)

Artista: Neu!

Álbum: Neu!
Año: 1972
Género: Krautrok
Duración: 45:42
Nacionalidad: Alemania

Lista de Temas:

1. -Hallogallo
2. -Sonderangebot
3. -Weissensee
4. -Im Gluck
5. -Negativland
6. -Lieber Honig

Alineación:

- Michael Rother / guitar, bass guitar
- Klaus Dinger / Japanese banjo, drums, guitar

Este es el Primer trabajo de la banda experimental Neu, formada por el guitarrista Michael Rother y el Baterista Klaus Dinger después de ambos abandonar Kraftwerk en 1971, el disco comienza con el excelente Hallogallo (Porcupine Tree hizo una muy buena versión en el álbum Signify) y que es uno de los temas referentes del ritmo Motorik que se explica como la sensación incesante de ritmo comparable a estar conduciendo por una autopista (esto también se percibe en el tema Autobahn de Kraftwerk)

Fueron producidos por el mismo productor de Kraftwerk Conny Plank y son considerados uno de los máximos referentes del sonido Krautrock.

by Thom Jurek

Fresh after leaving Kraftwerk in the fall of 1971 for what they perceived to be a lack of vision, guitarist Michael Rother and drummer Klaus Dinger formed their own unit and changed the face of German rock forever  eventually influencing their former employer, Florian Schneider of Kraftwerk. The 1974 album Autobahn was a genteel reconsideration of the music played here. Neu! created a sound that was literally made for cruising in an automobile. While here in the States people were flipping out over "Radar Love" by Golden Earring, if they'd known about this first Neu! disc, they would never have bothered. Dinger's mechanical, cut time drumming and Rother's two-note bass runs adorned with cleverly manipulated and dreamy guitar riffs and fills were the hallmarks of the "motorik" sound that would become the band's trademark. 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. These are draped in Rother's liquidy, cascading single note drones and runs, so even as the tune's momentum propels the listener into a movement oriented robotic dance, the guitar's lyrical economy brings an aesthetic beauty into the mix that opens the space up from inside. 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. These official CD reissues, remastered by Neu! with Herbert Gronmeyer, are the first official ones. Their sound is phenomenal and the strange dropouts and fades are intentional. They are worthy packages. Oddly enough, after a millennial change and a constant stream of samples being taken from it, and its influence saturating both the rock and electronica scenes, it still sounds ahead of its time.

 

Now is the time on Pitchfork when we dance! As part of a court-ordered apology for unleashing Fatboy Slim on an unsuspecting universe, the Astralwerks label has undertaken the incredibly noble task of re-releasing the first three albums by the legendary Düsseldorf duo Neu. The albums are to be played round the clock at Astralwerks HQ; the cheap Crayon graphics of the compact disc are to be pinned on shirts like scarlet letters; all employees are to dance the Robot at all times. We need to praise Neu like we should.

As far back as I can remember, the first three Neu albums languished in the Import-only Impossible; the Japanese letters on the sleeves were incomprehensible, but also painfully explicit: prohibitively expensive, they screamed. And now, their stateside release has opened up unimagined worlds to the ears, cheap!

And like the band's moniker promises, this music is new. Strange and visionary, but so incredibly familiar. Why? Because a record originally cut in 1972 by a splinter off the indomitable Kraftwerk has seeped into the musical consciousness of a generation; its influence is everywhere. Listening to Neu recalls that giddy, pointless thrill of standing at the Four Corners in the southwestern United States. What's the big deal? Well, nothing, really, except maybe the sense of being in many places at once. That's Neu: standing with cocked German eyebrows at the nexus of shimmering space rock, processed psychedelia, mechanical kraut, and wonderfully libidinal disco.

Upon hearing "Hallo Gallo," the first track on Neu, a friend of mine started inadvertently humming an organ line from Tortoise's "Djed." That quiet gesture summed up the album for me: listening to the past and hearing so much of the future. But Neu is no mere missing link. "Hallo Gallo" is a masterpiece of rhythm: tight drums, funky guitar scratch, a coolly insistent bassline, futuro synths, and effects-laden guitar slinging wide acid-fried launches into deep space. Neu is remarkably economical where its influences cultivate excess: the exploratory guitar and keyboards discover new aural landscapes where the pioneers of prog would remain hours blissfully adrift. "Hallo Gallo" is intelligent dance music in every sense of the term: it's the ass inviting the mind out onto the floor. Nobody leads; both are simply in motion.

"Sonderangebot" is a murky soup of noise and silence: an interlude of clanging cymbals, and ambient fuzz, a kind of breathing nebula. The song bleeds darkly into "Weinensee," a droning parade of dirty, cone-filtered guitar that anticipates the pastoral psychedelia of Flying Saucer Attack and Hochenkeit. "Negativland" opens in jackhammer drills and coalesces into a lock-tight, bass-driven martial progression of stabbing guitar and industrial noise: it's dark but strangely danceable. Something like krautpunk: syncopation, cerebral and serrated.

Neu is music with the proper documentation: it passes from one musical realm to another without the jackbooted border patrol so much as blinking an eye: this is sound with the highest level security clearance. And when it shifts from one sound to the next, it never winks at you with postmodern irony, never elbows you in the ribs to let you in on the joke. Neu is truly a citizen of the musical universe, at home everywhere and everywhere at once. And Astralwerks' re-release of this phenomenal debut could only serve as a long overdue recognition of this fact. For perhaps without Neu, there would have been no Astralwerks; worse, without Neu there may have been no Pitchfork. Neu anticipates us all. Now who's your daddy? Come on, say it! Captura de Tau Analizer