Neu! 2
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| NEU! 2 | |||||
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| Studio album by Neu! | |||||
| Released | 1973 | ||||
| Recorded | January 1973 | ||||
| Genre | Krautrock, Electronic music, | ||||
| Length | 42:14 | ||||
| Label | Brain | ||||
| Producer | Conny Plank, Neu! | ||||
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| Neu! chronology | |||||
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NEU! 2 is an album by Krautrock band NEU!.
It was recorded in January 1973 at Windrose-Dumont-Time Studios, Hamburg, Germany, mixed in February 1973 at Windrose-Dumont-Time Studios, Hamburg, Germany, and released in 1973 by Brain Records. It was officially reissued by Astralwerks on May 29th 2001. Illegal bootleg CDs (with the audio taken from vinyl) from the 'Germanofon' label were widely available in the late 1990s.
This album further focused the classic Neu! 'Krautrock' sound, with 11 minute Für immer in particular being the archetypal example of their style—a seemingly endless forward-driving vamping, propelled by Dinger's 4/4 drumming and Rother's layered guitar with its fluid lines and droning harmonic structure.
Side 2 of the record caused consternation at the time: Neu! had quite simply run out of money to finish recording the album, so side 2 is made up entirely of their previously released single "Neuschnee/Super", manipulated at various playback speeds on a recordplayer, or mangled in a cassette recorder. Critics at the time dismissed this as a cheap gimmick and a rip-off. Whilst it was indeed an experiment born of desperation and necessity, it was entirely in keeping with Neu's pop art aesthetics, taking a 'ready-made' sound object and re-presenting it with a series of stylized manipulations, and also quite in keeping with the way Neu's music deconstructed and pared down the form of rock music. Dinger has since pointed to side 2 of this album as being a prototype of the now ubiquitous multiple 'remixes' which typically accompany any pop single release.
[edit] Track listing
Side 1
- Für immer ("Forever")
- Spitzenqualität ("Top Quality")
- Gedenkminute (für A + K) ("Minute's Silence (For A + K)")
- Lila Engel ("Lilac Angel")
Side 2
- Neuschnee 78 ("New Snow 78")
- Super 16 ("Super 16")
- Neuschnee ("New Snow")
- Cassetto ("Cassetto")
- Super 78 ("Super 78")
- Hallo Excentrico! ("Hello Excentrico!")
- Super ("Super")
[edit] Personnel
- Konrad "Conny" Plank – Producer, engineer.
- Michael Rother – Guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, zither, percussion, electronics, cassette recorder.
- Klaus Dinger – Japanese banjo, 11-string guitar [sic], percussion, Farfisa electronic piano, vocals, electronics, record player.
- Hans Lampe – Engineer.
