NEU!

The selftitled debut album from German krautrock act Neu! was released in 1972. I´m not an old fan of the band and have only started listening to their music after reading about them on PA. After listening to this album for a while I can say that I´m both very happy and very annoyed with what I´m hearing.

The music on the album is almost purely instrumental except for the last song Lieber Honig which has some pretty strange vocals. A very stripped down track which consists solely of guitar, vocals and some sound effects. It´s an okay track. The 10:07 minute long opening track Hallogallo takes the price here though. What a great song with it´s relentless beat and pleasant guitar effects. A really powerful song. Unfortunately the album continues with the worst song on the album called Sonderangebot which I put in the experimental noise with no purpose catagory. I don´t enjoy this at all. The next song Weissensee is fortunately much better. A pretty psychadelic track. Im Glück is up next and again I have to ask myself why I bother. It´s a little better than Sonderangebot but it still doesn´t satisfy me at all. Negativland is the other highlight on the album for me as it features a relentless beat and great effects. note the way the pace changes throught the song. As mentioned the only vocal track Lieber Honig ends the album.

The musicianship is excellent and I really enjoy the relentless and precise drumming from Klaus Dinger. Michael Rother adds many great effects to the music as well.

The production needs to be mentioned in particular as it is pretty exceptional to my ears. Organic and powerful. Really enjoyable. It´s actually pretty hard to believe that a sound like this was created in 1972.

Neu! is without a doubt a very interesting and influential band but I really wish they would have left out the noisy and ambient experiments and focused more on relentless rythms and power. When they do focus on those qualities they shine IMO. I can´t give more than a 3 star rating which is really a shame as the good moments on the album are worth much more, but the bad moments are far too outspoken and drag the album as a whole down to mediocrity.