Neu! - Classic or Dud?

His solo albums are totally different. Not that ive heard them much. Who wouldve thought him rejoining RHCP would coincide with their worst ever material though, so i dont blame anyone for wanting to avoid.

http://www.geocities.com/Omegaman_UK/lcd/LCD5.gif

That live '72 CD goes on way too long, but it does have moments so I would certainly check out the edit. And while I felt burned buying Neu! 4 for $26 in 1994 and getting that mess, once iTunes came along, the 3 or 4 good tracks started coming through

I saw Rother / Frusciante / Klinghoffer in concert in 2005 playing stuff from Rother's solo albums and they nailed it, I was sad they didn't do a live album, this is great news.

more worried about flea's inclusion than frusciante

"will release their long-lost album with Brian Eno, Tracks and Traces"

How can this album be long-lost? It was released on CD like a decade ago!

i thought it was supposed to be a follow-up to tracks and traces like additional material from those sessions

wiki: "In September 2009 an extended version of Tracks and Traces will be released by Gronland. The new album features three additional tracks from the Harmonia & Eno ´76 collaboration."

So three additional long-lost tracks from a album of unreleased sketches. Sounds wonderful.

frusciante's great

Didn't the RHCP put a Harmonia track on a compilation album of influences?

The first few Neu albums aren't exactly hard to get find the last 5 years. I have the first three just picking them up from stores.

This is all very "He's dead, so now I can do what I like"...

Which may well be better than what was there before, first three albums excepted.

(willing to be proved wrong tho)

I'm having difficulty imagining the Venn Diagram intersection between RHCP and School of Seven Bells, tbh.

The first few Neu albums aren't exactly hard to get find the last 5 years. I have the first three just picking them up from stores.

This is all very "He's dead, so now I can do what I like"...

Yeah, I find this a bit awkward. Re-recording Neu 4, doing some kind of Neu tribute tour, etc.

Anyway, Frusciante is awesome - some people need to get past the whole RHCP thing.

I just dug out "Live 72", for the hell of it.

Track one is actually sounding quite nice (four mins in, out of 32), but it's still a 'cassette recording of a practice/jam session' or something like it.

Maybe if they re-recorded new versions of tracks, rather than patch up some bad recordings, this could be something...

As I said yesterday, I have an open mind about it, but still suspect this will not be ...)

i saw those first 3 neu albums on vinyl in hmv just the other day

A quick skip on ebay shows loads of copies of "original" UA pressings for buyitnow prices (i.e. very good looking fakes), so theres a market for LP versions I guess.

The EMI reissues are possibly collectable, the true original UA issues are probably not due to all the good fakes.

xpost well there you go.

Bought Brain pressings a couple of years ago, took me a few months. Vinyl's good on all of them, covers VG I'd say.
Love (the mp3's of) Neu!4 in their own quirky way (not La Düsseldorf quirky but still highly entertaining) and am interested as to what Rother will make of that release.
I can relate to the doubts expressed in this thread ("He's dead, so now I can do what I like"...) but I also think that because of Dinger's attitude a lot of the stuff that could have been released hasn't. I just hope Rother doesn't add too many "tasteful accents" to the original material... As to the tour - I don't know what to expect from that at all but I'm definitely going if I get a chance.

To be honest, if he goes out as "The Neu! Experience" and the band are tied down strongly to the material, it could be seriously awesome.

As MES once sang, "don't start improvising for fucks sake!"

Either way it sounds like utter bollocks to me. Anyway, Rother is full of it, "Neu 4" is great, OK so a few tracks are superfluous, but it's obvious which tracks those are and if you ignore them and concentrate on the core tracks it's much better than anything Rother was capable of producing on his own in 1986 - I shudder to think how it might have turned out if he'd had his way with it. Viva Klaus!

They are interesting photos. One is actually even quite funny, I can tell you, because it was a spontaneous situation where we tried to shake hands but the hands didn’t meet. I’m smiling at this and Klaus is looking at the camera with a sly look, and it is funny in a way.”

I really, really want to see this.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3509/3831459404_be09fe3089.jpg
If it's anything like this one...

http://www.neu2010.com

Enormous vinyl box set about to drop. Includes, for the first time, Neu! '86.

Some talk (ppl expressing their doubts about rother's possible "reworking" of the material that makes up Neu! '86) about that 6 months ago.
Info from Rother's site, from 02/2010:

Most of all I´m thrilled about the release of the album NEU! ´86 which Klaus Dinger and I originally recorded in 1985/86, but left unfinished back then and which led to some unfortunate problems between Klaus and myself in the 90s. I now completely reworked the album from original multitrack and master tapes, and unearthed a few yet unknown tracks which are essential for a full understanding of what Klaus and I focussed on for NEU! in the mid 80s. It was my aim to present Klaus Dinger´s musical strengths and visions just as much as my own ideas. The best musical result was to be my only guideline, not the ego. All during the emotional process of reworking our album Klaus was on my mind and I contemplated what he would think about my decisions. I was very relieved and moved to hear from his heir, Miki Yui, who contributed many valuable ideas to the making of the box set, that she was pleased with the result presented with the album NEU! ´86."

So I suppose there won't be any tasteful newly recorded additions - looking forward to this, I must say.

Also, more dates for the temporary band he's put together (with Steve Shelley, Benjamin Curtis and Aaron Mullan) - performing Neu!, Harmonia and Rother tracks. Should be fun/great, nothing less!

So I suppose there won't be any tasteful newly recorded additions

I hope not, I like it as it is!

1971
Florian Schneider witnesses Michael Rother´s jam with Ralph Hütter in Kraftwerk´s Kling Klang Studio and invites Rother to join the band after Hütter´s retreat.
In the lineup Florian Schneider, Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother Kraftwerk play numerous concerts around Germany. They appear in one radio and two tv shows, i.e. the popular BEAT-CLUB. Schneider, Dinger and Rother perform “Rückstossgondoliero” (released in 2001 on the BEAT-CLUB dvd “Best of ´71”). The recording sessions for the second Kraftwerk album in the lineup Schneider/Dinger/Rother with Conny Plank as co-producer remain unsatisfactory and are terminated half-way through.

I really wish they'd stop mentioning to us how unsatisfactory those sessions were and just KICK DOWN

Super stoked for those live dates tbh.

Michael Rother is listed as appearing at the Rough Trade East "Record Store Day" celebrations. I would have thought this would lead to the total collapse of Brick Lane and some sort of Fame style jam session in the streets, but it is definitely there in the advertising. Also Laurie Anderson.

Can Michael Rother just announce the date at the South Bank Centre and get it over with....

I'm desperate to see this after seeing him cut loose with the motorik beat at the Harmonia gig...

boxset now on sale http://www.neu2010-shop.com/content/produktdetail.aspx?a=11284&s=78

4 vinyl LPs & 1 vinyl maxi-single
- Original studio albums NEU!, NEU! 2, NEU! '75 and the for the first time, an official release of NEU! '86
- NEU! '72 (previously unreleased live maxi-single 20 minutes)
- 36-page picturebook & NEU! stencil
- Free download code for all albums via www.neu2010.com
- Free NEU! t-shirt (one of three designs)

all for an eyewatering €120

The way the euro is going, that might prove to be the cheaper option..

Um... fuck yeah?

http://70.32.78.35/sonicnews/?p=810

Has anyone here bought the boxset?

and is neu '84 as bad as everyone says it is?

'86

it's a bad neu! album, but it's not a bad album, if you get me

Neu! 4 is awesome (if you like Dingervision and if you don't like Dingervision do you like Neu?) lotsa proto-chillwave and ecstatic synth dance tracx.
not sure what Rother did in new vers, I've only heard nineties issue.

box-set tracks going cheap on most of the .mp3 stores (F**k Itunes =£35)

I picked it up for £7 from 7digital.com

still working my way through the tracks.

sound a lot clearer than my Astralwerks LPs, was any remastering done?

all reviews to date have been kind of useless on the issue of what exactly Rother changed for Neu! 4. can anyone who actually cares about this band and has heard both chime in?

apologies if that sounds rude -- there have been well-written reviews but seeing as the sole appeal of this entire box set for fans who've already invested in the earlier version of 'Neu! 4' is Rother's revision, and that there were two or three tolerable tracks on the original version that could have benefited from a remix, it's just frustrating not to be finding anyone discussing the actual changes from the original Captain Trips issues

i'll give it a shot:

NEU 4
1 Nazionale 3:11
2 Crazy 3:15
3 Flying Dutchman 3:56
4 Schöne Welle (Nice Wave) 4:30
5 Wave Naturelle 5:37
6 Good Life (Random - Rough) 3:51
7 86 Commercial Trash 3:18
8 Fly Dutch II 5:06
9 Dänzing 5:08
10 Quick Wave Machinelle 3:46
11 Bush - Drum 3:10
12 La Bomba (Stop Aparthijd World-Wide!) 5:59
13 Good Life 3:42
14 Elanoizan 3:24

NEU 86
A1 Intro (Haydn Slo-Mo) 0:33
A2 Dänzing 5:05
A3 Crazy 3:16
A4 Drive (Grundfunken) 5:13
A5 La Bomba (Stop Apartheid World-Wide!) 5:30
A6 Elanoizan 2:32
B1 Wave Mother 4:53
B2 Paradise Walk 5:11
B3 Euphoria 3:59
B4 Vier 1/2 1:02
B5 Good Life 3:42
B6 November 1:43
B7 KD 1:54

Intro is Nazionale cut down to 30 seconds. Danzing and Crazy are the same just remastered. Drive (Grundfunken) is an new track and probably the best thing on it. La Bomba and Elanoizan are shortened versions from Neu 4. Wave Mother is a shortened version of Wave Naturelle. Paradise Walk is a new track. Euphoria is a pitch-correcting, slightly slower and longer version of Quick Wave Machinelle. Vier 1/2 is an edited version of Fly Dutch II. November and KD are new tracks.

good life is the same, forgot that one. worth having both but 86 is better imo

Drive (Grundfunken) is an new track and probably the best thing on it.

thank you, fellow person who actually loves this music & knows their shit as opposed to simply having an opinion

really does sound like it's an improvement overall, actually

I shouldn't be so snarky! I just really love this band. And I completely understand reviewers who are taking the stance that casually interested listeners might want to pause before investing in this thing, given how peripheral the extra two discs are. At least douglas @ pfm actually seems to have acquired the physical box before reviewing it & engaged with the concept that this is the Rother-Version (and objected to that in and of itself), it's just I can't find a single review that even engages with the fact that the Rother-Versions are considerably musically different, which really is not just esoteric fanboy information

like most people I found the fourth one massively underwhelming in the 90's as a $25 import CD, but in the age of iTunes the 2 or 3 good tracks did start to stick out

yes. my quote stands regarding such musics as always happens..."you won't like Neu! 4, it's all cheesy 80s electronic dance music". OK. Ignores Neu! 4 for many years...then remembers that I specialize in cheesy 80s electronic dance music. Actually listens to it. Thinks "this will be killer on a mix". Never records said mix.

7 quid for the neu! digital box?? that's cheaper than '86 on its own! brb

ok, Rother's version of 'Neu! 86' is actually sequenced like an album that makes sense instead of a compilation. The tracks that share the same chord sequences come in an order that makes sense and makes them seem like reprises instead of repetitions, the ambient interludes are cut down to ok segueways instead of interminable fillers, and the four new tracks make a big difference. 'Drive' is five minutes of Neu! just loosely mainlining, the dubby drum breaks in 'Paradise Walk' are interesting, and the two short stripped down remixes at the end really work as a coda, especially 'KD' which is basically Klaus' vocal take on 'La Bomba' soloed and dubbed, which is a completely affectionate way to close it in the man's absence

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

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.