NEU! 2

The second Neu! album has a strong first side but is let down horrendously by the album's second side. The first four tracks, and the two best songs on the second side (Super and Neuschnee) continue the rhythmic, pulsing, hypnotic experiments of the debut, with a bit more aggression and bite to them, at points taking on a proto-punk fury, prefiguring the Krautrock- punk fusion of Neu! 75.

However, the band infamously ran out of time, ideas and money in producing this album, and therefore had nowhere near enough material to fill the thing out. Thus, the second side consists of Neuschnee and Super themselves, and then five tracks which simply consist of manipulations of those two tracks. Neuschnee 78 and Super 16 and 78 are far and away the worst offenders here, since they are literally just the tracks played at differing speeds, whilst the remaining two tracks involve the tracks being played on malfunctioning tape recorders.

This, quite simply, is a scam. Attempts have been made by the artists to justify it as "experimental", but the fact is that there are some sonic experiments which are worth trying but don't actually yield results worth listening to, and these tracks are an example of precisely such an experiment. They've also suggested that the modified tracks are "remixes", an excuse which could only be believed by someone who didn't really understand what a remix is and what work goes into producing one. The fact is that neither Neuschnee nor Super are improved by this treatment, leaving the second side of the album a miserable failure. What original material the band still have is still good, so I'll give this album a second star, but buyer beware - you may be paying a full-album price for an EP's worth of material.