Kraftwerk

While I don't completely disagree with Tony and agree certainly that the best bits are better most things. I would say that the worst bits are pretty useless. 'Neu' for example. The tracks Tony mentions are excellent, the rest is rubbish. I would certainly get Neu75 first, I would agree it is by far their most consistant, it has 3 brilliant tracks and 3 pretty good tracks, rather than the brilliant/rubbish mix of other albums.

 

Greeny,

I can appreciate why you may prefer Neu! 75 above their other two albums, however I couldn't agree that it is head and shoulders above. I think their first album is equally as good -sometimes I prefer it to '75 and other times I don't. I consistently enjoy either of these above Neu! 2, an album which has a couple of really good tracks with the rest being re-inventions eg. played at double or half speed.

Neu! 2 is a good album, just needs to be appreciated at a different level. I guess you could say that they invented to re-mix with this album.

Regards,

Stuart.

 

To criticise Neu! For lack of consistency really is nit picking of the highest order. Ten minutes of Neu! on form is more important / better / more useful to the bands who came later than most bands entire dreary, predictable, evolutionary output. Ok, so you buy Neu! 2 primarily to get Fur Immer, but that sounds like a truly great deal to me. I'd take ten minutes of Neu! over ten hours of say U2 any day.

Up until a couple of years ago the only way to get hold of the Neu! albums was to pay about 60 quid a pop for an original vinyl pressing or suffer overpriced and very poor quality pirate CDs. Even so it was actually worth it. You young people nowadays have never had it so good!

Neu! are one of those select few bands who actually changed the way music developed – they may not have sold many copies of their records at the time, but the few people who bought them used the information contained in the groves wisely. This can clearly be heard on first listening – they sound strangely familiar and current, though the familiarity and currency is entirely down to their profound influence on others who came later. The shock comes when you read the date on the label and realise just how far out of their own reality they existed – the first Neu! album was born at the same time as Genesis' Nursery Cryme, Yes' Fragile, Moody Blues' Every Good Boy Deserves Favor etc, and (whilst I've nothing against these albums) by comparison Neu! sound like they arrived from the very distant future via a time tunnel.

I rank the three Neu! albums up there with say Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz, Beach Boys Pet Sounds, Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, Velvet Underground and Nico, Can / Faust etc, Eno's Music For Airports, Kraftwerk's TEE, Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works and hundreds more truly brilliant and influential LPs, i.e. the albums that shaped the way forward. It is not even necessary to 'like' any of these albums, but it is very useful to understand what they brought that was simply not there before. Anyone with even the faintest interest in the evolution of modern music needs all three Neu! albums!

Tony.

 

Just bought the Man Machine for a £5 in Fopp, it seems ok so far not had chance to listen to it properly yet though, I can't believe it was made in 1978.