Grönland/EMI Electrola/Astralwerks
NEU!
Guitar arches out like twilit sunshadows and the omnipresent beat is there, new dawn, new dawn. Synthesizer languidly moves backwards and forth, the Sunday eveningmorning that holds in rapt attention at the creation of something new. Six crepuscular tracks? Wcka wcka wcka. Wow wow wow. And so on. Then on to the swelling and pitching of the flanged cymbals, split side by side, side-to-side, riding along the hyphens of the moments and all the pop mythos that that entails with its entrails.
And now the rowing of the boat with the Norwegian girl, sad as the icicles dripping their tears across the salted earth. Guitar and tones drift up from beneath the deep, two whales in anticipation of mating, sound travelling as far as it can in the depths of an ocean. Roaddrills attack and in come the sound of distant violins… The tangled tingle of the guitar comes back into play, moving from speaker to speaker, resting then restive and back again. The natal urge of water seems to return, seeking its own level, and the scraping of walls is not so much a statement as it is a return to the purity of the current…
NEU! 2
The euphoria of the everdrive revs up and launches on its way to movement compulsion. The masses are now washed and the head nods in pleasant assent. Wow wow wow wow and swoop swoop. It ends like a coiled snake reeling back into its nest, and is it water or wind that accompanies its cessation? A chasm opens up and it is above this that Mr. Dinger’s drumming suspends. Slowly and slower and almost inert it rings, harder and harder and POW! A gunshot outside my window. The morphogenetic fields of intention and peace collide again.
Then the backward mask and the speeding up of things. Scratches of vinyl. Then the same, but slowed down. These re-recordi…wait. Holy shit! No, wait, it can’t be. Fucking hell. It IS! This “Super 16” track is featured as the villain’s main theme in Master of the Flying Guillotine, a martial arts film from 1974. A Golden Harvest production, I believe. The Master (a blind, bald, tufted-eyebrow bastard in yellow robes with swastikas on it) seeks the One-Armed Boxer who killed his disciples. HIIIIIIIIII-YAH! There’s a mad monkey boy, a demon swami who can extend his arms to unusual lengths, a samourai killer with hidden knives – totally awesome! If memory serves, there’s also bootlegged tracks from Ralf and Florian, or other very early Kraftwerk, in the film as well. The martial arts film with the Kosmische soundtrack – exceptionally stirring and foreboding…”Neuschnee”, the following track, possibly also appears on the soundtrack, in a smaller capacity.
A warbling pounding now, intermittent, phasing in and out of this existence. Speeding, slowing, standing still just long enough to be aware that standing still isn’t to be desired.
Such is life?
NEU! 75
The deja vu strikes in highly enjoyable tones and the choons load up the car and drive down to the beach with the buch and Bach for a day of rest and relaxation. Parallels could be drawn between one group and another but that is always unfair to the groups themselves. Yet it must be said that this music is not so much foretelling the future as it is racing like a tachyon for a halcyon place and time. The road then empties into a brooding forest of sound – the slow bass, the tap on metal and the slow rising snake of synth – and there’s that guitar, and I really do wisht I’d known about all this when it was happening. I would’ve been the coolest five-year-old around!
The rain falls and the piano reflects it from behind, below, around. Stars indeed shining. Yet then the Apache beat (disregarding the thoughts of Ian Astbury on same) kicks in on “Hero” and it’s very sad that all we have to offer from the Punk Rock trenches are no meat, sore throats, and lack of travel to Norway. Oh, but apples with pesticides, yum! And is the hero nothing more but a bag of wind, in the end? The family drives to another place, caressing the notwet wind in the hand as it rushes through the air, stuck out the window and even the bugs do not plague it, so shimmering and cool is it in the slow slow slow while of the afternoon. Oh, and the recording decelerates, too, speeding up for a finale that led ultimately to rancour and misunderstanding and a return to harmony after too too long a time…
-David Cotner-
