Neu! - Classic or Dud?

wake me up when the Gunter Schickert box set comes out

Is there anywhere you can get the live '72 tracks on their own? I already bought the last round of reissues for the first three albums and really don't want to shell out for them all over again, but the live '72 tracks are "album only" on iTunes (with purchasing the whole box for $29 - which I'm not about to do). I am shelling out for the '86 though, so interested in hearing that.

the aforementioned 7digital lets you get em individually for 79p each

http://www.7digital.com/artists/neu/neu-4/

still no masterpiece but Rother's version actually feels like an album, it's a real improvement

I have no more interest in hearing this than I did in hearing that Brian Wilson's Smile thing from a few years back tbh. Are the new tracks "new", are they new recordings? Anyway, the original "Neu 4" is fine by me, I play it all the time! Just re-sequence it and ignore the obvious filler and unfinished tracks and it's about milion times better than the pedestrian shite Rother was putting out in the mid 80s (and coincidentally better than Dinger's "Blue" album)

lol dang tom, u mad? rother's like the chillest dude and dinger's version is pretty piss-poor in sound quality. the "new" tracks are new as in unreleased, no new recording was done, just editing/remastering/remixing/track shuffling.

"I worked for about 6 months alone on the recordings for the album Neu! ’86. That was one of those very unhappy stories of the ’90s, where Klaus Dinger suddenly released a version of that album—he called it Neu! 4—in Japan behind my back. That was terrible. I call it the dark decade, really, when Klaus was so difficult and just wasn’t able to communicate and to find an agreement with anyone, really. Last year, when we met with our label Grönland and Klaus Dinger’s widow, Miki Yui, she agreed to re-release the album because I proposed that I would take care of those recordings and try to create a better version. I was really very unhappy with the poor musical quality of what Klaus had released. And so I was really happy that she said okay, go ahead. It was my risk, actually, and then I invested—because she always could have blocked the release—and then I worked for six months, transferred the recordings, and discovered some recordings that I had actually forgotten about because Klaus and I had recorded those tracks and then left them untouched for the rest of the project. We concentrated on so much other material—we had tons of material in the ‘80s—so in the end, when I finished Neu! ‘86, I myself was very happy. Some lucky circumstances, there were some lucky stars I guess over my studio, and it all worked out really well. I was totally convinced. And then I presented that version of the album to Grönland and to Klaus’ widow, and everybody agreed to release it, which really made me very happy. We also did a good job working as a team, something that, to be honest, was very difficult with Klaus in later years. So Miki, who’s also a musician and a visual artist and is capable of judging the quality of art and music, and I did this big picture book for the box set and collected many photos from our archives, several archives, and several people wrote texts about Neu!. So much goodwill and effort went into that project. It really made me—proud is maybe not the right expression, but I was so utterly pleased by the result. It’s beautiful."

listening to the Rother interview on East Village Radio last week, he doesn't sound bitter about the whole thing -- just kind of in awe of how nuts Dinger could be. "He ... he was crazy, you know."

i wonder if the members of la dusseldorf and la neu had the same experience or was it just a grudge he had w/ rother

Anyone in the LDN going to this?

http://www.barbican.org.uk/music/event-detail.asp?ID=11079

I will be in town, thinking about getting tickets if there are any left...

Am in the LDN and going. Need to revise my Harmonia beforehand...

yep, Seefeel addition is great too

The Visitation are doing a Krautrock night at the Lock Tavern the night before.. if anyone going to the Barbican wants to get in the zone beforehand.

We've got one of the guys who wrote for the Krautrock book DJing and its always a fun night.

Just got Neu 86, and it's great!

Agreed. Wave Mother is an incredible song.

hey this live EP thing that came with the box set is actually great! i mean, it's lo-fi and loose, but it's pretty fucking cool.

Dud.

Thanks for your solid, rational reasoning.

Deud.

NEU! have burrowed themselves so deep into my listening that I can't even fathom a "dud" response anymore. Right about now, if a band doesn't have a little something of that relentlessness, I don't want to listen to them. (By that token, I'm totally fucking ape over that last Oneida album)

Neu! 86 has turned, unexpectedly, into an 'in-car' hit with the rest of the fam, along with their Cheryl, nDubz and crystalcastles' Cds

... just got it in FOPP for £5. I was a bit snooty about it upthread(before actually hearing it of course!) 'cuz I was worried that Rother might make it all tasteful and Rotherlike or (worse) update it in some way: thankfully he hasn't really done that much to the basic tracks: he's dropped some of the rubbish and sequenced it quite nicely (tho not perfectly, "Crazy" should obv. be the second track, as on Dinger's version, not "Dänzing"). I'm useless at spotting stuff like "improved sound quality" and "remastering", so the massive improvements mentioned above are largely lost on me. I don't know why Rother's decided to lose "Schöne Welle (Nice Wave)" and "Bush-Drum", both of which are quite nice tracks, the latter doesn't sound anything like Neu! but so what? "Paradise Walk" disconcerts me 'cuz it sounds like a rhythm preset on an old keyboard I used to have, it doesn't sound finished to me. Neither does "Drive (Grundfunken)", which everbody loves because it sounds like Neu! and proves that Rother could still whip out Neu! riffs at the drop of a (Tyrolean) hat, but is basically a jam that would never got anywhere near an album if they'd ever managed to put out the album anything other than retrospectively. Anyone up for another version with bonus tracks? <----- Joke

Yeah, I don't know why he lost those two tracks either. I guess he wanted to sort of mask the fact that most of the tracks they recorded were based on the same 4 chords and just dropped a few of them. "Bush Drum" was something different though. I dont know, no matter how you arrange the tracks, there's really not much of an album there. Dinger's version was nearly unlistenable. Rother's is better, but its much better taken track-by-track rather than listened to all at once. Definitely has a very distinct "unfinished" feel to it.

Leb Wohl <3 <3 <3

Dud. Totally boring.

Out.

dud

is it bad that all non-faust/can krautrock i listen to is for the express purpose of hypnotic background noise for reading? i find neu more droney than most drone out there

"Fur Immer" is one of the greatest songs ever, tho it is v drone-y!

Not all hypnotic background noise, in case anyone forgot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYeVvp8sdmg

i like la dusseldorf better

I can't believe I started this thread over a decade ago... Hypnotic background noise?! What about "Negativland"? Almost everything on Neu! 2? Yeah, Dan, "Hero"!!! They're immortally classic. I was visting one of my better restaurant customers yesterday, showing them a few new wines, and "Hallogallo" suddenly started burbling from the speakers... I freaked out mildly, stopping mid-sentence, being all "this is NEU!? you guys are playing NEU!"... The several-years-younger OWNER and his assistant were like, "yeah I guess... this is the internet radio we play sometimes" or something. It's so funny to think back about how giddy I was that this stuff I had only read about would finally be available, saving up some bucks (and probably selling some CDs) to get the Astralworks reissues, and just listening to them again and again. Now we can just cue it up on Spotify, cross our arms, and pass our judgments in a flash! [/grumpy old early-30s man]

Was drinking in this bar last night!

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-zq0oZXv9dw0/TnM7MfpJ3BI/AAAAAAAAAE4/lpKx1HTyDVA/s512/IMG_0018.JPG

Pretty good interview with Michael Rother in the new Wax Poetics, of all places. Summary: Couldn't really handle being friends with Klaus because he was crazy, but we really connected over the music and I'm super proud of that.

Pretty good interview with Michael Rother in the new Wax Poetics, of all places. Summary: Couldn't really handle being friends with Klaus because he was crazy, but we really connected over the music and I'm super proud of that.

I don't ever remember any mention of Neu! in early Jesus & Mary Chain pieces (there was a lot of talk from journalists about the Velvets, Stooges, Suicide, Ramones etc), but Neu 2 is all over some of their early stuff. I guess the journalists just hadn't heard the records in '84, '85?

They were 'relating' them to the VU, at which point they decided "job done".

It wasn't until the J&MC covered "Mushroom" that the possibility of "other influences" were considered.

Probably more likely that journalists had heard Neu! than JAMC, it's possible JAMC had but they were 110% Velvets anyway

Anyway, I don't hear the influence!

When was Ciccone Youth? That was one of the first time I heard of Neu! being namechecked... in the 80s that is. And then Stereolab came along and it was obvious they'd been "rediscovered" big time.

Well, I saw SonicYouth supporting the J&MC at the Hammersmith Palais back when, and Ciccone Youth was after that.

Obviously JAMC had turned them on to Neu! when they were all hanging around in the dressing room after the gig

Definitely a Neu! influence on Bobby Gillespie as you can hear if you listen to his motorik bongo beats from that one show he played sitting in with Damo Suzuki and Captain Beefheart.

Also he says this:

"Neu! is, in my opinion, one of the more towering musical achievements in recent history, and we are all living in the individual shadows of these two men. Speed and stillness, simplicity and cacophony, gentleness and aggression, mania and focus, are all juxtapositions that have been given a voice, and have learned to coexist under the equally as contradictory guidance of Michael and Klaus."

Nah, I'm sure they were all trying to get tales out of Jayne Casey... (xpost, Pink Military were 2nd support)

Spitzenqualität could be a mid-80s JAMC b-side

Also he says this:

"See that fuckin' Neu!, fuckin' ripped me aff so they did. They came tae see the fuckin' Mary Chain, ah think it wis at Janie's in Gourock... aye the Boey Hairdressers wur supportin' us, pile o' shite they wur till ah fuckin' lent Norman some Big Star records and said, "Here ye go, son, rip that moab aff and ye'll be laughin'"... anywey, where wis ah? Oh aye, there ah um fuckin' knockin' back the shandies wi' Stephen Pastel and that fuckin' Klaus Dinger cunt comes up tae me 'n is aw like "Oh, herr Bobby, you are the best drummer I hef ever seen, Mo Tucker voz right about you!" and ah'm like, "Aye aye, pal, heard it. Who let this pair o' losers in?". And the other yin, he wis oo'er at fuckin' Wullie Reid bendin' his fuckin' earhole aboot fuckin' guitar strings or sumthin'. Next thing ye know, the cunts huv pit oot their fuckin' first album 'n it's goat the fuckin' Mary Chain aw oo'er it!"

^ much more believable than his actual quote, when will these so-called newspapers print the truth?

Pretty good interview with Michael Rother in the new Wax Poetics, of all places. Summary: Couldn't really handle being friends with Klaus because he was crazy, but we really connected over the music and I'm super proud of that.

I know that Klaus was really the "genius" of the group but I feel like Michael should have had the final word on what was actually released

i have read this thread several times over the years, but never dived in until today.
just found neu! and neu!2 in fopp in the £2 exchange bins in very good condition.
listened to neu! and starting neu!2 now.
i already know that these going to be top of the playlist for a very long time to come.
very chuffed.

Neu 75 even better!

as of today, i will be tracking that one down

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHUwkYkn_kA