VINYLART #10
NEU! NEU!
Brain Records Germany, 1969 Artwork by Klaus Dinger
HUGH DELLAR ponders the industry-changing statement this all-new minimalism of this sleeve made
culture, the air is thick with incense, patchouli oil or hash – or maybe even all three. An array of underground papers lay piled on the counter, alongside flyers for local free festivals and gigs; fading lithograph posters from the heyday of psychedelia adorn the otherwise slightly scabby walls; the local heads engage in arcane conversation with the owner, his overflowing locks kept from his reddened eyes by a leather headband, his flares flapping in the breeze every time the shop door opens. The stereo belches out an endless supply of drum solos, guitar wanking, pseudo-classical motifs and hoarse- throated singers desperate for their skin-tight cords to bulge in exactly the same way as Robert Plant’s…while the racks themselves, the very reason you ventured forth in the first place, positively groan under the weight of LPs bedecked with airbrushed Roger Dean visions of other worlds, gnarly hobbit-inflected mythological iconography and endless identikit motley crews of former brickies trying it on in oh so du jour combos of sequins and spangles.
I
Nothing there to grab the attention of your average bored, frustrated, hormonal 15-year- old, born four years too early for punk’s explosion of frustration and taboo-breaking glee. The existential howling of the baby of the Third World War LP briefly catches the eye, as does the dumb blank menace/promise of the
138
magine, if you will, your average local record store way back in 1972. In keeping with its position near the epicentre of the slow crash and burn of the counter
Elektra Stooges LP mouldering in the bargain bin, but nothing really to merit the spunking of that hard-earned cash. You idly flick your way through the foreign import section, wondering whether it might not be time to cut your losses and split when suddenly your senses are assaulted by a blank white sleeve with the word NEU boldly emblazoned across it in blood red, underlined and then finished off with a screaming exclamation mark. Its simplicity and difference and raw street graffiti visual violence hit like a punch to the solar plexus.
That the stark cover is so attention-grabbing should not, perhaps, be a surprise. The group were formed a year earlier in Dusseldorf and the name was suggested by one of drummer Klaus Dinger’s friends who worked in advertising and who pointed out that neu – German for new – was the most commonly used word in commercials. The other member of the group, Michael Rother, who laid down bass and guitar, was initially opposed to the name, preferring something more “organic”, but it stuck – and stuck good. Dinger recalls that the band’s logo “was a protest against the consumer society, but also against our ‘colleagues’ on the Krautrock scene who had totally different taste/styling, if any! I was well informed about Warhol, pop art, contemporary art. I’d always been very visual in my thinking. Also, during that time, I lived in a commune and in order to get the space that we lived in, I set up an advertising agency that existed mainly on paper. Most of the people that I lived with were trying to break into advertising,
so I was surrounded by this Neu! all the time.”
Given that the group emerged from a garage band called The No, and that both Dinger and Rother had previously played with Kraftwerk (who themselves had earlier roots in a noisecore combo entitled Pissoff), it was to be expected that the six songs on the LP were as radical and forward-thinking as the moniker suggested. NEU! was a pointer to a new and different future; a record that, despite only selling 30- 40,000 copies at its time of release, proved endlessly influential.
Opener ‘Hallogallo’ (a play on halligalli, German slang for wild partying, with the word hallo being German for “hello”) is 10 minutes plus of wordless 3AMabstract autobahn locked-groove 23rd century blues, underpinned by Dinger’s “endless straight” 4/4 drumming – and amazingly became a radio hit. In the UK, John Peel picked up on the record and championed it relentlessly, signalling a sharp left turn away from the perfumed garden and towards a harsher, more restless, minimal future.
To those of you that remain uninitiated, Neu! are all the proof you’ll ever need of Nietzsche’s maximthat if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back. Just as the cover threatens, this LP is a challenge to all comfort zones, to tradition, to aesthetics, to trends, to the lazy and casual listener.
Beyond new, this is still light years ahead.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140