Below is a review that I have composed for amazon.co.uk (there wasn't one up yet). My thoughts on the release of their out-takes album got a bit out of hand. I don't really want to post an overlong review, especially since amazon reviews should be short and punchy. Excessive length hasn't stopped me in the past, but I think its for the best. Enjoy!
Neu! '86 is the long awaited fourth album by the brilliant and obscure (until about 2001) German group, Neu! It was recorded in the autumn and winter of 1985-86, hence its name. While it is very exciting to hear this music, it is actually the second release of the sessions. Without going deeply into the inter-group disagreements between Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger, the material was released by Dinger on a small Japanese label in 1995 under the title Neu! 4. That album was a real ragtag collection of music with several tracks sounding like different takes and mixes of one another. It was a mess but an engaging mess. Dinger appears to have thought that titling the album as '4' connoted the half-finished brilliance of Neu! 2, their second album. That album however, was a side of complete and enthralling music backed with a side of discordant non-music that was created in the studio to fill out the LP. Neu! 4 simply sounded unfinished, it was badly sequenced and left the impression of a rip off.
Neu! '86 then, made since the passing of Dinger, inevitably resembles Rother’s take on the album sessions. It is an unusual prospect of an album, akin (I imagine) to listening to Let It Be Naked, the Beatles revision of their final album, or one of Jimi Hendrix’s or Otis Redding’s posthumous albums. So, a cynical 1995 album gets a cynical 2010 re-release? That’s one view, but I don’t take it, for two reasons. First, there will always be people who hanker after demos and aborted sessions, and Neu! '86 at the very least prevents them from spending ridiculous amounts of money for music. Secondly, I think Rother has done a good job, I really do.
Young (in the 1970s)
Neu! '86 does one thing that the former incarnation does not, it sequences the music well and thereby presents the unfinished music in the best possible way. The first half of the album is arguably the better with the more finalised songs like 'Dänzing', 'La Bomba', 'Crazy' and 'Drive (Grundfunken)'. The second half has more fragments of songs, but these are short and multi-layered. Rother appears to have taken the master tapes and mixed together a lot of the material. Dinger had chosen to extend and expand this material. Again, I can see advantages and problems with each approach, but the difference is that Rother's is a better listening experience and a less repetitive record.
So what of the actual music, how does it fit with that of their three albums? Well, and this is, depending on your tastes what makes the album a failure or a success. The music is, to crowbar in and alter John Peel's summary of The Fall, different but the same. In places it sounds very of its time, the 1980s, with Synthesizers and Keyboards everywhere. These sound a bit cheap, and a little daft in their application. Yet, detractors should remember that Neu! '75, their third album had a lot of keyboards. Thankfully there is some very Neu! music to be found, 'Crazy', 'Drive' and 'Wave Mother' each have the smack and formula of Dinger's drums complemented with rock riffs and beautiful patterns of Rother's guitar. On the debit they sound a bit like minor homages to their trademark sound, and the short length of each is disappointing (the longest is six minutes). Vocals are prevalent on the album, which is probably the biggest difference. Dinger sings (i.e. shouts) over a lot of the music, much like he memorably did in the 1970s on 'Super', 'Lilac Angel', and 'Hero'. Those songs while defining and brilliant were complimented with long instrumental tracks, which in my opinion, were their forte. Neu! '86 ends up being a bit too talky, with sung songs from 'Dänzing' on down all having the same and therefore tiring sloppy, silly, and playful abandon. Neu! '86 just isn’t as majestic or mysterious as their best work.
Old (in 2001)
In summary, Neu! '86 is a good record. It isn’t seminal, and probably says more about music in the mid-1980s than it does about the music of Dinger and Rother. Taken with their other albums it is refreshing and different. It still sounds like Neu!, but it is the distillation of the rock ethos of side 2 of Neu! '75 with the synths of side 1 of that same record. In failing, Neu! ended up sounding truer to themselves than they perhaps realised. Try It.
By the way, I haven't posted it yet. But if accepted it will appear here.
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