''Neu! 2'' is the second studio album by the krautrock band

Neu! Neu! (; German for "New!"; styled in block capitals) were a West German krautrock band formed in Düsseldorf in 1971 by Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother following their departure from Kraftwerk. The group's albums were produced by Conny Plan ...

. It was recorded in January 1973 and mixed in February 1973, both at Windrose-Dumont-Time Studios in Hamburg, Germany, and released in 1973 by Brain Records. It was officially reissued by Astralwerks in the US and by Grönland in the UK and Europe on 29 May 2001. Illegal bootleg CDs (with the audio taken from vinyl) from the Germanofon label were widely available in the late 1990s. Critic

Paul Morley Paul Robert Morley is an English music journalist. He wrote for the ''New Musical Express'' from 1977 to 1983 and has since written for a wide range of publications as well as writing his own books. He was a co-founder of the record label ZTT Re ...

included it in his list of the "5 x 100 Greatest Albums of All Time" in 2003.

Overview

This album further focused the classic Neu! krautrock sound, with the 11-minute "Für Immer" in particular being the archetypal example of their style -- a forward-driving vamping, propelled by

Klaus Dinger Klaus Dinger (24 March 1946 – 21 March 2008) was a German musician and songwriter most famous for his contributions to the seminal krautrock band Neu!. He was also the guitarist and chief songwriter of New wave music, new wave group La Düsse ...

's drumming and

Michael Rother Michael Rother (born 2 September 1950) is a German experimental musician, best known for being a founding member of the influential bands Neu! and Harmonia, and an early member of the band Kraftwerk. Early life and education Born in 1950, ...

's layered guitar with its fluid lines and droning harmonic structure. ''

Pitchfork A pitchfork (also a hay fork) is an agricultural tool with a long handle and two to five tines used to lift and pitch or throw loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves. The term is also applied colloquially, but inaccurately, to ...

'' described the album as featuring a proto-punk sound, while '' Fact'' labeled it "spartan psych-rock set to power-driven drum tracks." Side 2 of the record caused consternation at the time. Neu! had quite simply run out of money to finish recording the album, so the second side consists entirely of their previously released single "Neuschnee/Super", manipulated at various playback speeds on a record player, or mangled in a cassette recorder. Critics at the time dismissed this as a cheap gimmick and a rip-off. While 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 subsequently pointed to side 2 as being a prototype of the now ubiquitous multiple remixes which typically accompany any pop single release.

Legacy

Ben Sisario of ''

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'' described the album along with the band's other early albums as "landmarks of German

experimental rock Experimental rock, also called avant-rock, is a subgenre of rock music that pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique or which experiments with the basic elements of the genre. Artists aim to liberate and innovate, with ...

," also referred to by journalists as krautrock. "Super 16" appears in the films ''

Master of the Flying Guillotine ''Master of the Flying Guillotine'' is a 1976 Hong Kong ''wuxia'' film starring Jimmy Wang Yu, who also wrote and directed the film. It is a sequel to Wang's 1971 film ''One-Armed Boxer'', and thus the film is also known as ''One-Armed Boxer 2' ...

'' and ''

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''.

Track listing

Personnel

;Neu! *

– guitar, bass guitar, keyboards,

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, percussion, electronics, cassette recorder *

–

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("Japanese banjo"), 11-string guitar, drums, percussion,

Farfisa Farfisa (Fabbriche Riunite di Fisarmoniche) is a manufacturer of electronics based in Osimo, Italy, founded in 1946. The company manufactured a series of compact electronic organs in the 1960s and 1970s, including the Compact, FAST, Professio ...

electronic piano, vocals, electronics, record player ;Additional personnel * Konrad "Conny" Plank – producer, engineer * Hans Lampe – engineer

References

{{Authority control 1973 albums Albums produced by Conny Plank Neu! albums