Neu!
Neu!
[Astralwerks]
Rating: 9.7
Now is the time on Pitchfork when we dance! As part of a court-ordered
apology for unleashing Fatboy Slim on an unsuspecting universe, the Astralwerks
label has undertaken the incredibly noble task of re-releasing the first three
albums by the legendary Düsseldorf duo Neu. The albums are to be played round
the clock at Astralwerks HQ; the cheap Crayon graphics of the compact disc
are to be pinned on shirts like scarlet letters; all employees are to dance
the Robot at all times. We need to praise Neu like we should.
As far back as I can remember, the first three Neu albums languished in the
Import-only Impossible; the Japanese letters on the sleeves were
incomprehensible, but also painfully explicit: prohibitively expensive, they
screamed. And now, their stateside release has opened up unimagined worlds to
the ears, cheap!
And like the band's moniker promises, this music is new. Strange and visionary,
but so incredibly familiar. Why? Because a record originally cut in 1972 by a
splinter off the indomitable Kraftwerk has seeped into the musical
consciousness of a generation; its influence is everywhere. Listening to Neu
recalls that giddy, pointless thrill of standing at the Four Corners in the
southwestern United States. What's the big deal? Well, nothing, really, except
maybe the sense of being in many places at once. That's Neu: standing with
cocked German eyebrows at the nexus of shimmering space rock, processed
psychedelia, mechanical kraut, and wonderfully libidinal disco.
Upon hearing "Hallo Gallo," the first track on Neu, a friend of mine
started inadvertently humming an organ line from Tortoise's "Djed." That
quiet gesture summed up the album for me: listening to the past and hearing
so much of the future. But Neu is no mere missing link. "Hallo Gallo" is a
masterpiece of rhythm: tight drums, funky guitar scratch, a coolly insistent
bassline, futuro synths, and effects-laden guitar slinging wide acid-fried
launches into deep space. Neu is remarkably economical where its influences
cultivate excess: the exploratory guitar and keyboards discover new aural
landscapes where the pioneers of prog would remain hours blissfully adrift.
"Hallo Gallo" is intelligent dance music in every sense of the term: it's
the ass inviting the mind out onto the floor. Nobody leads; both are simply
in motion.
"Sonderangebot" is a murky soup of noise and silence: an interlude of
clanging cymbals, and ambient fuzz, a kind of breathing nebula. The song
bleeds darkly into "Weinensee," a droning parade of dirty, cone-filtered
guitar that anticipates the pastoral psychedelia of Flying Saucer Attack and
Hochenkeit. "Negativland" opens in jackhammer drills and coalesces into
a lock-tight, bass-driven martial progression of stabbing guitar and
industrial noise: it's dark but strangely danceable. Something like krautpunk:
syncopation, cerebral and serrated.
Neu is music with the proper documentation: it passes from one musical realm
to another without the jackbooted border patrol so much as blinking an eye:
this is sound with the highest level security clearance. And when it shifts
from one sound to the next, it never winks at you with postmodern irony,
never elbows you in the ribs to let you in on the joke. Neu is truly a
citizen of the musical universe, at home everywhere and everywhere at once.
And Astralwerks' re-release of this phenomenal debut could only serve as a
long overdue recognition of this fact. For perhaps without Neu, there would
have been no Astralwerks; worse, without Neu there may have been no
Pitchfork. Neu anticipates us all. Now who's your daddy? Come on, say
it!
-Brent S. Sirota