Some words about NEU!

To celebrate the release of the whole NEU!-discography as well as the release of the fabulous NEU! Box-Set on Herbert Grönemeyer's Grönland-Label (i tend to forgive him his last few records as long as he keeps re-releasing decent stuff like the NEU!-discography) i decided to write a short note about this pioneers of modern music

NEU! was the brainchild of Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger, both early members of Kraftwerk.
Dinger was initially hired as a session-drummer for the recording of the first Kraftwerk-album and later turned into a regular band-member; Rother joined shortly after the release of the debut, only to stay for a couple of months. Both left the band in 1971 before the recording of the second album.
The only available footage featuring Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother as part of Kraftwerk is the Song "Rückstoß-Gondoliere" which was recorded and filmed live for the German Beat-Club.

Michael Rother (left) + Klaus Dinger (right)

After leaving Kraftwerk, Dinger and Rother founded NEU!, teamed up with Conny Plank and started recording their first album which was released on Brain Records in 1972.
The first NEU! turned out to be a highly influential masterpiece and the band continued to change conventional listening-patterns on the following efforts "NEU! 2" as well as on their final official-release "NEU! 75".


The music of NEU! was always characterized by Klaus Dinger's and Michael Rother's creativity and love of experimentation...both developed their own distinctive way of playing that can be recognized just after seconds of listening.
Dinger's robotic drumming inspired countless drummers and eventually even led to the creation of the musicial-term "Motorik".
Michael Rothers reduced style of guitar-playing stood in complete contrast to the hard-riffing, solo-addicted rock-guitarists, yet it was driving and exciting - even when playing tracks that would be tagged as ambient...you just couldn't hear something like that back then.

One year after the release of the first album, NEU! started recording their second LP but initially spent most of the record company's advance payment on new instruments....as a result of these investments the band had to cut down studio time and ended up with just enough material to fill one side of the album. Acting out of necessity they decided to play around with the existing material...they speeded tracks up, slowed them down, added some distortion, looped some parts and ended up with some of the first examples of sampling and remixing in music history....not only were these "new remixes" sufficient to fill side two of the album - some of them even sound good! ;)


Over the years the musical differences between Dinger and Rother grew and they started to drift away from each other in a musicial-sense. Their final album, "NEU! 75", turned out to be the manifestation of their different musical-approaches at that time: Side one contained Michael Rother's beautiful, laid back ambient-like-compositions while side two featured Dinger's raw and unpolished proto-punk-tracks with him singing coherent vocals......another thing unusual for NEU!-standards, as the only vocals to be heard on the other two albums are some screams or silent "lalala-parts" here and there.
NEU! 75 also featured Klaus Dinger's brother Thomas on the bass and Hans Lampe who did the drumming on side two of the record while Dinger played the guitar parts. The additional musicians should help to add a little extra variety especially when performing more complex-arrangements...sadly their services weren't needed much longer as NEU! went in a long phase of inactivity without ever releasing anything again (except "NEU! 4" which was put out by Klaus Dinger without Michael Rother's agreement and, according to Rother, can not be viewed as a real NEU!-album).

After the end of NEU!, Klaus Dinger and his brother Thomas went on to be quite successful with their new project "La Düsseldorf" (good stuff - give it a try) while Michael Rother released a couple of amazing solo-albums, often backed up by other musicians out of the german-scene (Can's Jaki Liebzeit comes to mind)....they are also highly enjoyable - just listen to "Flammende Herzen"!


Two years ago Klaus Dinger passed away, closing the chapter NEU! forever.
What remains is the beauty of their songs.



NEU! discography:

NEU! (Brain 1004) 1972













Tracklist:

Side 1

1. Hallogallo
2. Sonderangebot
3. Weissensee

Side 2

1. Im Glück
2. Negativland
3. Lieber Honig
   

NEU! 2 (Brain 1028) 1973













Tracklist:

Side 1

1. Für Immer (forever)
2. Spitzenqualität
3. Gedenkminute (für A+K)
4. Lila Engel (lilac angel)

Side 2

1. Neuschnee 78
   
2. Super 16
   
3. Neuschnee
   
4. Cassetto
   
5. Super 78
   
6. Hallo Excentrico
   
7. Super
   

NEU! 75 (Brain 1062) 1975













Tracklist:

Side 1

1. Isi
2. Seeland
3. Leb’ wohl

Side 2

1. Hero
   
2. E-Musik
   
3. After Eight