neu! '75

Neu! brought their divergent musical streams together to craft this ambient motorik proto-punk amalgam.     Michael Rother  and   Klaus Dinger  started the project after a brief stint with Kraftwerk in 1971.  They recorded two experimental albums ('Neu' and 'Neu 2' ) before taking a brief hiatus.  During the recording of the second album, they ran out of money and used remixed versions of singles from the album to flesh out side two.    Michael Rother left Düsseldorf to form Harmonia with Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius in Forst/Weserbergland; while  Klaus Dinger started his own label Dingerland which soon went bankrupt.

Dinger:    "I studied architecture for three years and gave that up and jumped into a black hole, and, ja, let’s say this official way of life was gone at that time, so somehow I had to express myself, or together with Michael, but still myself — or himself. I also was very, I mean I believed in his originality from the beginning. It was very obvious. So, ja, what else, what more can you ask for? But, ja, self-consciousness, I think that is a very individual thing ... Neu! 75 happened in December 74, and, ja, in this year, early 74, I made my own label, and had produced another group, called Lilac Angels...I spent a lot of money on that and I didn’t get the response I wanted from the industry...Anyway, the deal didn’t happen and I was very angry, bankrupt for the first time in my life, lots of debts for my experience so far at that time, it was about 50,000 marks. And I made two more attempts to get this label going, and organised, and also borrowed money to finance two free concerts in 74, which happened in a place quite close to Düsseldorf. And also then nobody appeared from the industry, and, ja, I think at that time I already had a quite bad image — which didn’t get much better in the meantime over the years ... My then girlfriend, which you find one way or the other in many songs, “Lieber Hönig”, for instance, that is this one, or the one who sat with me in this rowing boat you can hear on the first album. This was a bit difficult relation, because she had to go to Norway with her parents, and during the whole Neu!, this whole time, these three years, we nearly never met, or so on, somehow strange to believe today, ne?, how this can happen, and in 74, in this year when all these things didn’t happen, also this relationship finished, and all these bad feelings and, ja, not so much perspective, I must say, at that time, the only chance was to, OK, there was one more record to make for Metronome, and we did that. But as you can hear... it’s maybe quite interesting to really write it down these “Hero” words..."

'Neu '75' was recorded and mixed at Conny Plank's studio between December 1974 and January 1975 with Konrad "Conny" Plank acting as producer and engineer.   The sessions featured  Michael Rother on guitar, keyboards, and vocals;   and   Klaus Dinger on drums for side 1, and guitar and vocals for side 2;    with Thomas Dinger and Hans Lampe playing drums on side 2.  

Rother relates:  "With Klaus Dinger, it was possible for me to record music, it was a very successful combination. Klaus Dinger had the qualities I lacked, and I guess it was also the other way around, and so we managed to record the music we did.  However, as a duo, with Klaus Dinger playing the drums and me playing guitar, in a live situation there was not enough depth in music, on our 2 instruments we could not create enough details, and so we tried several musicians and, looking back, it's quite clear that it couldn't work because our vision of music was different from, and that was also the idea behind the music, was different from what every other musician had in his mind, and so we more or less stopped looking for other musicians." 

http://www.neu2010.com/

'Neu '75' 
full album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT0f1Tw3YXM




All songs written and composed by Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother.

Side one
00:00 "Isi" 5:06
05:06 "Seeland" ("Sea Land") 6:54
12:01 "Leb' Wohl" ("Farewell") 8:50

Side two
20:52 "Hero"   7:11
28:03 "E-Musik" ("Ernste Musik") 9:57
38:01 "After Eight" 4:44