Neu! 1972 by Peter Lindbergh

NEU! Vinyl Box Set

Groenland Records

By Eugene Reznik

Road tripping, sitting at the wheel, hypnotized by a big wide-open road, listening to the beat beat beat beat and the buzz of the engine and road humming and the wind howling and anything that comes across your path over and over again.

This is Krautrock. Or, it’s as good a stand-in as any. I’m talking about one song, NEU!’s 1971 “Hallogallo.” It may be just a single connotation, and it might not fit with the German narrative, but for those of us who weren’t hanging around Düsseldorf in the seventies, for the American audience that has to listen and live with its aftereffects, it became the archetype and the paradigm. Those who like to scoff and talk about the real Krautrock, they’re right to call it a “phenomenon.” But the experimental rock phenomenon was not restricted to Germany. It happened here too and it came by way of the record.

It’s the 4/4 on the floor “morotik” beat, the driving rhythm that’s always repeating and yet progressing with a forward motion, and the endless layers of panning, pulsating, dopplering in and out filters, phasers and synths that can put you in a hypnotic trance or prompt revelations. This must be what it’s like to drive on the autobahn. The song creates an atmosphere and it flies by in ten minutes. You put it on when you’re driving and before you know it, it’s gone. Maybe it distracts you from time; maybe it just makes you think you finally understand relativity.

This form they pioneered is what we came to associate with the genre. Knowing it could be a moment of clarity for those of us often thinking where the hell all these ambient “experimental” bands today came from and what they listened to. It also makes you think what the hell these NEU! guys where listening to. On the experimental, electronic end, they were pretty much at the forefront. Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger started NEU! after leaving their original band, Kraftwerk, considered to be the root of popular electronic music and one of the first to use Moog synthesizers.

On the other hand, morotik’s a great label, but they obviously weren’t the first to use an ostinato rhythm. We couldn’t know what NEU! was listening to in 1972, but we can still draw a parallel to The Velvet Underground. It’s not hard to superimpose some motorik on the Velvet’s 1968 “Sister Ray,” clocking in at 17:26 in the studio, but the sound, with its songwriting emphasis on repetitive rhythms and improvisation makes them really similar.

The chaotic “Sister Ray,” however is probably more apt for rocking out in a dope-induced stupor than chilling out in a (different) dope-induced torpor. It can’t have the same smooth mechanic or spacey connotations. What NEU! did was blend rock and electronic. They became the stand-in for Krautrock, maybe because they were more palatable for the American audience with their use of real drums and guitars, or maybe because they were more imitable.

Once you break down “Hallogallo,” you can start to hear it everywhere. In spite of, or maybe because it almost can’t be covered, the song’s been the object of mimicry and parody ever since it came out. It’s almost as if every band, at one point or another, recorded or not, did some semblance of a Krautrock song, did their Krautrock song.

We started to see Krautrock done live.

The jubilant background wall of “pa pa pa pop’s” and “oo wah wah oo’s,” and the clean, easy strumming of the guitar might make this more apt for a Parisian bike ride than a cruise down the autobahn, but halfway through, the song breaks down, the synth takes over and the motorik comes out full force. You can look through Stereolab’s catalogue, or just hit next track, and hear “Hallogallo” all over.

This starts off pure motorik and pure “Hallogallo” but manages to transition flawlessly to pure Wilco. On top of that, Jeff Tweedy uses the 10-minute form to bust out his nastiest tone and most delightful ear piercing screeches where he couldn’t have elsewhere on A Ghost is Born.

Woods uses track 4 of their 2009 Songs of Shame largely to the same end as Wilco. “September With Pete” isn’t exactly motorik driven until late in the song, but once again at 9:40, the form allows them to break out their trippy, unstructured psycadelic side amidst an album full of harrowing pop masterpieces.

These guys seem to miss the mark and their repetition dances the fine line with boredom. A lot of the talk surrounding The Horrors’ Primary Colors centered on how much they outdid their debut album, Strange House. Lost in all this, however was the fact that Strange House just wasn’t any good in the first place. Primary Colors may have been a step up from the debut, but songs like “Sea Within A Sea” show that they started to sound like a whole bunch of other great bands, like NEU! and Joy Division, but have little to show for themselves.

The truly good songs that came out of “Hallogallo” and the Krautrock “phenomenon,” don’t simply mimic the form, they appropriate it. Stereolab, Wilco, and Woods blend their own elements, make the form theirs and steer clear from trying a sort of cover.

Fujiya Miyagi makes a bunch of cute but admirable 4-5 minute attempts at it, adding vocals on its 2007 Transparent Things. Yo la Tengo’s “Spec Bop” might be the closest thing to a “Hallogallo” cover, fading in with all the right elements and holding strong for 10:41, but it still manages to assert its own identity.

Sonic Youth’s “Listening to Neu” is obviously noteworthy. It opens with a comically slow half-motorik, the cheesiest of department store synths and a kind of irony that can be amusing for a few seconds, but virtually unbearably thereafter. But the song might not be a parody of “Hallogallo” as much as it is a parody of the endless “Hallogallo” sound-alikes.

Everyone does motorik, some bands more than others, and nothing really beats the original. “Hallogallo” was only the beginning, track one, side one, album one. NEU! built up on it, they sped it up, slowed it down and layered it with all kinds of stuff over the course of three studio albums. On May 10, they’re re-releasing a catalogue box set with the original three albums, an unreleased fourth album, NEU! ’86, live recordings and singles, and a book of very cool and very rare photos.

“NEU!” is pronounced “noy” or “noi.”