Neu! - Classic or Dud?

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.

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