Neu - Neu

The debut album by influential kraut-rock duo Neu sounds a lot like an introverted rock album. The faster songs with Klaus Dinger's driving motorik beat have the drive, but they are also restraint, almost subtle with the minimal keyboard drones and sweet phased guitar lines. And only a half of the songs have drums, the rest of the material ranges from proto-industrial noise of "Sonderangebot" (basically a lot of cymbal noise sounds, until the ugly feedback at the end) to the harmonic drone in D major of "Im Glück" and a lethargic attempt at a vocal track (tentatively sung by Dinger) on "Lieber Honig" which mid-way becomes another ambient drone number, almost sounding like Neu's own "Moonchild", but inferior. As for the rest of the tracks, "Negativland" which takes cues from the first Kraftwerk album and predates Joy Division, is the sole track filled with gloomy and unrelenting brutality, featuring a lot of white noise, atonal guitar scrapings and hard-hitting rhythms. "Hallogallo" is essentially based on rock&roll pulse and drive that is stripped from all its extroverted excesses and instead is something that in a much more refined form. This would be the path for Kraftwerk (Dinger and Rother were members of that band before they formed Neu on their own) to explore on the albums like Autobahn, mechanical, timeless, driving and futuristic. "Weissensee" is a lot slower track in the pastoral psychedelic vein of Pink Floyd, but more mesmerizing.

It has been said about this album that the music on it might as well have been recorded even yesterday, as opposed to at the end of 1971, and that describes the quality of this music well. This was recorded in just four days which makes it remarkable how this album sounds so magical, even more than any other album which takes months to record! Some ambient moments might have benefited from more sense of direction though; otherwise this is essential release for those interested in German kraut-rock.