Bleep

Who else can wrangle a coherent set of quietly psychedelic tunes out of motorik repetition, industrial noise, and transcendently simple melodies better than NEU!? Kraftwerk alumni drummer Klaus Dinger and guitarist Michael Rother birthed a musical movement dedicated to forward motion that's been driving endlessly since 1972. Aided by the production of the legendary “hidden member” Conny Plank, their brainchild NEU! would see them as krautrock luminaries, marking a point zero for German experimental rock music in the 20th century out of which future shades would flourish.

The band's debut landed over fifty years ago, their dynamism ensured it would become majorly influential in the decades to come; anyone who taps in today is immediately taken by the propulsion of opening ‘Hallogallo’. Muted strums and ticking drums form a clockwork that the rest of the track moves to, without ever feeling rigid or robotic. Its gently distorted swells and reversed plucks rise over the thrusting bassline, before that intense momentum is dispersed into the aether with the elongated cymbal roll of ‘Sonderangebot’ forming a siren like, intoning sea of sound.

‘Weissensee’ languidly picks up, gliding across the desert with a twang that reveals NEU! to be an album of contrasts and exciting left turns. ‘Negativland’ perhaps shows this best: pulling jackhammering, sputtering shreds out of the placid strings of the previous ‘Im Glück’, it suddenly drops its hypnotising rhythm, calling attention to the band's dedication to soundplay before coming back even harder and ever frenzied.

Half a century on and NEU!’s debut album is still an unparalleled blueprint in rock, electronic, and mind-expanding music of all kinds. A work that should be present in any record collection.