The Friday Morning Listen
Published January 09, 2004
Neu! 75 - Neu
What to call this kinda music? Do a little research and you'll see stuff like: Krautrock, cosmic punk, ambient, moody, art rock, minimalist, etc. Heck, when I popped this disc into my cdrom drive the CDMax selection dialog came up with three entries with musical genres of "misc", "new age", and "rock". I guess there's people out there as confused as me.
No matter the label, Neu had a way of getting the absolute most out of a single chord. Perfect for this morning's beautiful, incredibly sunny and below zero drive to work.
Plus, their drummer's name was Klaus Dinger...which always cracks me up.
(First posted on Mark Is Cranky)
Mark Saleski is a writer and music obsessive based out of the Monadnock region of New Hampshire. On his best day, he hopes to channel the ghosts of Lester Bangs and Jack Kerouac. He spends the hours of 9:32PM to 1:37AM carving out music reviews and essays for Jazz.com, Blogcritics.org and other publications.
- The Friday Morning Listen
- Published: January 09, 2004
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- Section: Music
- Part of a feature: Friday Morning Listen
- Writer: Mark Saleski
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i had never even heard of Neu til a friend introduced me to them a while back.
there was an article about them in either rs or sping...it's a shame, but that guy Dinger was instrumental in keeping their music out of print for years and years.
There was all kinds of great German music in the '70s, a real flowering, someone should write about it.
Cool, but I was thinking more like a post.
I love Neu! Great stuff, so hypnotic. I never realized until recently how much I loved krautrock - all the elements I'd loved in other, newer bands can be traced back to this stuff. It was Porcupine Tree's cover of Neu's "Hallogallo" that finally did the trick (it's on the new bonus-disc version of Signify if anyone's interested,) and eventually I tracked down a copy of Neu 2, then 1 and 75. I've been picking up Can discs whenever I happen upon them, and recently got my hands on the very cool Faust boxset The Wumme Years: 1970-73 to accompany Faust IV and the newer material like You Know FaUSt and Ravvivando.
Are Lucifer's Friend and Epitaph still available, Eric?
after discovering Neu! i went on a rock instrumental binge: Tuatara, Drums & Tuba, Disco Biscuits, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Tortoise.
Mark, it sounds like, based on what you mention there, that you'd probably really like a lot of the Thrill Jockey label's bands. Definitely check out Chicago Underground in one of its forms (Duo, Trio, Quartet, or Orchestra.) All this post-rock stuff is very much informed by krautrock from what I sense.
i think you're right about that tom. so far i haven't been disappointed with anything from that label.
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M, I love Neu and Krautrock in general. Two German bands from the era (without the electronic component) I love and NEVER hear anyone talk about are Lucifer's Friend and Epitaph - they were both on the Billingsgate label. Lucifer's Friend's first album was like gothic Led Zeppelin and Epitaph had a great double-lead guitar attack both rocking and melodic.