Not Blues-based, not American, not British

Occasional Albums Thing 066 - NEU! “NEU! ‘75”

We first met NEU! in this Blog in January 2024 when looking at their classic debut album “NEU!”.“NEU! ‘75” is their 3rd album, the follow up to the imaginatively titled 2nd album, “NEU!2”, and was released in, and I’m sure this will come as a shock to nobody, 1975! It’s also, to my ears, their most consistent, read that as best if you like, record. 

It had been two years since Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger had recorded together on “NEU!2”. Rother had been working with the members of the group Cluster, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, under the name Harmonia, a kind of Krautrock supergroup. When Rother and Dinger reconvened to begin recording “NEU! ‘75” it became evident that their musical ideas had diverged. Rother still favoured NEU!’s groovy/ambient/motorik sound while Dinger wanted something altogether more aggressive and rocky. 

The solution was to split the album into two distinct sides. Side 1, if you were familiar with previous NEU! grooves like “Hallgallo” and “Für Immer”, is Michael Rother’s side and sounds like you might hope/expect NEU! to sound given what they had produced previously. While over on Side 2 Klaus Dinger puts down his drum sticks, picks up a guitar, a microphone and rocks it up, in the process he pretty much invents Punk Rock a year before it shook London to its foundations.

“Isi” kicks off Side 1, an uptempo, I hesitate to say it but, dance tune that would have sat perfectly on the playlist of those early 80’s Futurist clubs I’m prone to prattling on about. Who knows maybe I did hear it back then but failed to appreciate it until more recently. “Seeland” is a beautifully melancholy thing, taken at a funereal pace and based around a very simple Rother guitar melody that develops from one note up to 10 or 11 that keep repeating and never get boring. Side 1 closes on “Leb Wohl”, which I think means “Goodbye”. It opens with the sound of waves, a subdued piano and some breathy vocals sung by “who knows who”. That’s how it continues for close to 9 minutes, no guitars, no drums and quietly soothing.

And then Klaus Dinger is set loose on Side 2. “Hero” opens with guitar chords Siouxsie & The Banshees would have been proud of before in come proper pounding tom-toms and Klaus wailing about “Just another hero, riding through the night”. “Hero” was said to be a favourite of David Bowie’s, who recorded his own “Heroes” just 2 years later, Dinger's vocal style must have been heard by one John Lydon, a confessed Krautrock fan, in North London and listen to those guitars and drums and tell me future members of the Banshees, Bunnymen, Joy Division and so many others weren’t listening. You want influence ? Well here it is in “Hero”.

Track 2, “E-Musik”, reverts to a more recognisible NEU! style, it’s like “Hallogallo” on performance enhancing drugs. The drums are still pounding but more Motorik, the keyboards tinkling, the guitars layered and keening, if it’s true that Bowie originally wanted Michael Rother for the “Heroes” sessions then he surely must have played Robert Fripp something like this as a pointer to where he wanted to go with the guitars. Everything comes to a close on “After Eight” which after some ambient noodling erupts into the pounding Tom-toms and Punk Rock electric guitar we encountered earlier, with Klaus now exhorting you to “Help me through the night…Help me see the sun”.

NEU! were/are hugely influential, on Bowie, on the first wave Punks and those later labelled Post Punk, kids who would form bands as varied as Simple Minds, Japan and Stereolab were very clearly  listening and taking notes. “NEU! ‘75”, while not featuring some of their seminal pieces, is probably the easiest “in” if you fancy lending an ear to NEU!. There are actual songs and it does away with some of the weirder experimental bits on their first 2 albums. As Michael Rother later said (and I'm paraphrasing somewhat) "We were trying to create a new German music, not Blues-based, not American, not British". It’s a bloody great record.

Seeland (Side 1) - https://youtu.be/VfLsCvLfFiI?si=pIms9d-M7t_kPlVg

Hero (Side 2) - https://youtu.be/H0HsOKN3ly4?si=voZYzVyRzdL_OemL