Neu! - Classic or Dud?

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.

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.