Neu!

NEU! (“new! ” in German, marked ) was a German rock group, representative of what the press called the Krautrock. The group was mainly active between 1971 and 1975. It known a small business success at its time, but has with its asset to have influenced many musicians, of which the Sex Pistols, David Bowie, Stereolab, Gary Numan, Ultravox, Simple Minds as well as the scene of Electronic music.

Members

Klaus Dinger (1971-1975, 1985-1986) - battery, voice, Guitar S & keyboard S
Michael Rother (1971-1975, 1985-1986) - Guitar S, voice & keyboard S
Conny Plank (producing and Sound engineer)

Collaborators

Thomas Dinger (1975) - battery
Eberhard Kranemann (1972) - low
Hans Lamp (1975) - battery
Uli Trepte (1972)

Biography

Neu! was formed in 1971 of a scission of the first formation of Kraftwerk, the group of Electronic music of Düsseldorf, whose first recordings were produced by Conny Plank . The beater Klaus Dinger had joined Kraftwerk during the recording of their first homonymous album. The guitarist Michael Rother was then recruited for the completion of the album (he had played in a local group - The Spirits off sound - whose beater Wolfgang Flür was going itself to join Kraftwerk afterwards two years). The founder of Kraftwerk, Ralf Hütter , left the group at this time and for six months, Kraftwerk consisted of Klaus Dinger, Michael Rother and Florian Schneider . This trio made some sporadic concerts and appeared in the German emission Beat Club . The tests of recording to the studio of Conny Plank were a failure (" a difference of tempérament" will entrust later Michael Rother), Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother went themselves from there to show their own project: Neu! Florian Schneider joined Ralf Hütter and the duet continued to record the second album of Kraftwerk under the crook of Conny Plank.

The first homonymous album of Neu! was not sold in very great quantity according to the current references - although 30.000 specimens represent much for a group of this kind - but is now recognized like a chief of work by artists as influential as David Bowie, Brian Eno and Thom Yorke of Radiohead.

Music of Neu! a synthesis of the avant-gardes of the time wants to be, between repetitive and industrial music, the whole being carried out in a punk urgency before the hour. Besides the small pockets of the albums, with their paces of advertisements for products of great consumption, announce the future currents of the design of the Eighties. Klaus Dinger hammers its battery and gives a metronomic pulsation to the unit, on which Michael Rother poses her loops of harmonies, sometimes calm and appealing with relieving, or evoking a faintness literally post-industrialist, manufactured with sounds of machines pointing out the factory. The second album of Neu! , baptized Neu quite simply! 2 , takes again the same diagram that the first, but the result is succeeded less, the group having had difficulties in join the two ends in studio, and being finally obliged to include beaches of preceding pieces in accelerated, to mitigate the lack of time. It is with the third album, Neu! 75 , that music of Neu! becomes all its extensive, the pieces follow the same directions that on the first album, but reach this time an high level of composition and production.

Discography

Neu! (1972)
Neu! 2 (1973)
Neu! 75 ( 1975)

Random links: