Monday's Long Songs

Andy Bell's GLOK side project released a new album last week, eight versions of previously available songs played live in session for Electronic Sound. The album, Gateway Mechanics, is out at Bandcamp digitally and on bright yellow vinyl. He's on tour as GLOK at the moment. The versions on the live album are superb, the synths and guitars flying off over pre- recorded drums, Andy's cosmische/ motorik influences in full flow. This version of Dissident (from the first GLOK album of the same name, released in 2019) is twelve minutes of Michael Rother- esque guitars and pulsing sequencer lines, the fuzzbox seeing some action in the final few minutes. 

As a bonus, a  few weeks ago Andy and Masal put out a cover of Neu!'s Hallogallo, recorded at The Social in May this year, nine minutes of West German by way of Oxford bliss.

Forty Minutes Of Neu! Rother And Dinger

Some West German motorik cosmische musik for Sunday, from the combined talents of Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger. Rother and Dinger formed Neu! in Dusseldorf in 1971, after both left an early incarnation of Kraftwerk. Rother, a calm, reflective man brought up in Munich, Wilmslow (!), Karachi and Dusseldorf played guitar and keys. Dinger, a lively, opinionated and extroverted drummer. In the studio Conny Plank produced and mediated between them. The clash of personalities and styles produced some of krautrock's greatest music- Neu!'s 1972 debut, their follow up a year later Neu! 2 and the third album '75. 

Between them they forged a new sound- Dinger's motorik drums, a repetitive, gliding, four four beat (that he preferred to call 'endlose gerade', which translates as endless straight, and later on he renamed the Apache beat) with Rother's guitar and keys layered on top, a futuristic, non- blues based, Mittel Europa music. Hallogallo, ten minutes of sensational, perpetual momentum bliss, opens the debut album, Neu! sounding forever new. Rother went off in various directions, to Harmonia and solo, coming back to Neu! and then off again. Dinger formed La Dusseldorf with his brother Thomas and Hans Lampe. Rother's solo albums are all worthy of investigation, not least the first four and especially 1977's Flammende Herzen and 1979's Katzenmusik. The mix below is built around the forever sound of motorik drums and melodic/ rhythmic guitars and keys, a blissed out but insistent way to spend forty minutes on a Sunday morning. 

Forty Minutes Of Neu! Rother and Dinger

• Flammende Herzen
• Rheinita
• Hallogallo
• Isi
• Viva
• Fur Immer

Flammende Herzen is from Michael Rother's 1977 solo debut of the same name, a five song instrumental album recorded with Conny Plank and with Jaki Liebezeit of Can on drums. He really knew how to pick drummers.

Rheinita is from La Dusseldorf's 1978 second album Viva, an album a friend once described to me as sounding like 'a happy Joy Division', which it does. Viva is the title track. 

Hallogallo opens Neu!'s 1972 self- titled debut, the sound of motorik announcing itself over ten glorious, relentless minutes. Hallogallo comes from the German slang word halligalli, meaning wild partying.

Isi was a 1975 single by Neu! and the opening track from 1975's Neu! '75, another example of the relentless, hypnotic interplay between Dinger's beat and Rother's music. By 1975 the pair had diverged, Rother's more ambient direction and Dinger's more rock styles coming back together to some kind of compromise, each directing a side of '75.

Fur Immer is the eleven minute opening track from Neu! 2, Rother's fluid, harmonic guitar playing pushed ever onwards by the drums. Somewhere, this song is still playing. 

Monday's Long Song

Neu!'s Hallogallo was the opening song on their self titled debut album, released in 1972. Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger formed Neu! after leaving the proto version of Kraftwerk the year before and began recording as Neu! with Conny Plank at the production desk as a duo, Dinger on drums and Rother on guitar. Hallogallo, all ten minutes of it, pretty much defines what has become known as the motorik/ krautrock sound. The other six songs on Neu! (the album) all have their merits but Hallogallo is the album's truest statement- the relentless, gliding drums, 4/4, uninterrupted and endless ('endlose gerade' according to Dinger- endless straight) with Rother's melodic, soaring, cosmic guitar lines layered on top. Rother has likened his guitar playing to the flow of rivers, the result of growing up and living near rivers. He was born in Munich and spent part of his early life in Wilmslow (not far from here, a Cheshire town on the outer fringes of southern Manchester's furthest reaches) and also in Karachi (where Pakistani music would influence his playing) before returning to Dusseldorf. I always think of Rother's guitars and their fluid forward motion as being like trains or motorways but the river references makes sense to me.  

Hallogallo

Hallogallo is perfection. If Neu! had recorded nothing else, Hallogallo would be more than enough. When it plays time disappears as Dinger and Rother play their eternal, harmonious groove. I can always click back to the start or return the needle back to the beginning of the record. If ten minutes isn't quite enough for you a helpful Youtube user called faxfaxfax has uploaded a much longer version, a spliced together Hallogallo playing almost endlessly, in a ten hour loop. 

Isi

There's nothing that compares to Neu! for making that dreamy, linear, soaring krautrock, the motorik beat gently pushing everything ever forwards. Isi is from 1975's Neu! '75, Rother and Dinger complementing each other perfectly throughout Side A. Michael Rother's lush layers of melody and sound on this are gorgeous and hypnotic.

Isi

Monday's Long Song

Sometimes things just come together really nicely. I had something else planned for today's long song but then Twitter throws this photo up and one thing leads to another and we have Neu! instead. Krautrock against Brexit!

Fuer Immer

I originally wrote a long post here about the ongoing Brexit disaster but then deleted it- does anyone need any more opinions right now? Then I remembered Daniel Avery's ambient/techno track from last year, a track named after the label our Prime Minster (at the time of writing) gave to nearly half the population a couple of years ago back. On Wednesday night Theresa May claimed on live TV that she's on 'our side' and that actually parliament is to blame. Nice bit of anti-democratic demagoguery there. Thankfully, in a world increasingly full of right wing demagogues and populists, our own version is a shit populist, completely lacking the common touch and with little actual popular support.

New Musik

If we're doing cosmiche we shouldn't go any further without acknowledging the masters. I never get tired of Neu!, that combination of straight ahead rhythms and guitars being fed through some lovely FX pedals for up to ten minutes. It's funny - all those bands active in West Germany from the late 60s onwards, produced by the same combination of geography, socio-political events, youth culture and US and British rock 'n' roll, get lumped together and don't really sound anything like each other. Neu!, Can and Faust sound very different from each other, which can make first delvings into the genre very confusing.

e-musik

Deutschland

I'm off on a school trip today so you'll find nothing new here for the next week. We leave north-west England at ten and head for Dover, crossing to Calais and then (hopefully) arrive in Berlin tomorrow morning. I've never been to Berlin so I'm pretty excited about it- plus, by stroke of good fortune and German efficiency, we'll be in Berlin when Germany play in the World Cup Final and are hoping to find somewhere outdoors to watch it, safely, with sixty-four teenagers. Whatever the result, it should be an experience. We've got a load of sights to see- the Olympic stadium, Sachsenhausen, the Berlin Wall, the TV tower, some museums, the Reichstag, Tiergarten Park. We've got two days in Berlin and then we make for Krakow, visiting Auschwitz and Krakow's Medieval market, before returning home next Thursday by an extremely long bus ride from Krakow to Calais.

There are so many Berlin/Germany musical references I could put here- any number of West German krautrock bands, Kraftwerk, Cabaret (the only musical I can really live with), German techno, Johnny Rotten's screaming line in Holidays In the Sun 'I was looking over the wall and they were looking at meeeee!!!', Nena and her ninety nine red balloons, Iggy and Bowie recording several of their best albums and lovers meeting by the wall, Trio's novelty hit from the 80s, various things Dirk and Walter have posted...
How about Michael Rother, ex-Neu!, and something from his 1977 beaut of an album Flammende Herzen (with Jaki Leibzeit on drums)?

Feuerland

Neu! Time

Krautrock (or kosmiche as it gets called now) has a reputation for being a bit difficult, a challenging listen, but much of Neu!'s output is like aural valium for me. I listened to Hallogallo the other day and felt considerably better for it- especially as at the moment the slightest thing has a tendency to make me feel like I'm about to lose it completely, swearing like a docker and stomping like a bull elephant. I've posted Hallogallo before so instead here's Isi instead- from Neu! '75, all piano and lovely warm analogue electronics with that good ole motorik drumming.

Isi

Amusingly years ago I had two of the three Neu! albums (Neu!, Neu!2 and Neu! '75) and found the one I didn't have on vinyl in HMV (which tells you it was a long time ago). I bought it, got it home and realised it was one I already had, so had to return to HMV and tell the man 'uh, um, I bought this. And I've already got it, can I change it for something else?' He looked at me like I was a total fuckwit- 'You bought it and you've already got it?' 'Yes. The sleeves are quite similar. And the song titles are all in German. And I couldn't remember which of their albums I'd got...' He did let me change it. Out of pity mainly. And my statutory rights.

Hero!

This sort of thing soothes the soul and I've been feeling a bit out of sorts recently. From Neu! 75. By Neu!

Hero

Flammende Herzen

As a companion piece to Davy's Cluster post yesterday this is Neu!'s Michael Rother back in 1977. Less the sound of sub-zero February this is a warm, hypnotic ride, waves of kraut synths, treated guitars and Jaki Leibezeit's motorik drumming.

Flammende Herzen

Box Set Go

The box set has got a bit more out of control this year (and somewhere there is a pedant waiting to point out it's boxed set). Box sets are nice, expensive, official product, beautifully put together, and designed to appeal to the obsessive collector. People like me I suppose.

David Bowie's Station To Station, released this year in a deluxe edition with five cds (full album, full live show, different mixes, versions etc), a lovely booklet, and with all kinds of memorabilia (facsimile back stage passes, tickets, badges and whatnot). Does anyone need five cds of Station To Station? Will anyone ever play the whole thing?

Neu! released a box this year with all three studio albums, some stuff they did in the 80s, a lovely booklet, and a Neu! stencil. For stencilling the Neu! logo wherever you might want to.

Screamadelica, soon to be released, with five cds (full album, all the remixes, live show, Dixie narco e.p., dvd of The Making Of..., T-shirt, and Screamadelica slipmat. For a penny under one hundred quid. Initial quantities signed by the band. Actually I quite fancy a Screamadelica slipmat. And the dvd will have interviews with Weatherall, with moving pictures and everything. But every remix has been released before, there's no new ones, and no new material. (While I'm here, I have a memory of being in a nightclub and hearing Moving On Up played but with Denise Johnson singing not Bobby. Does this version exist or was it my slightly addled 3am brain?)

Orange Juice's Coals To Newcastle- contains pretty much everything they did across five cds and dvd of tv shows. Lovely.

I'm sure there's loads of others I haven't mentioned. I'm sure they're all lovely too. I love the attention to detail. I like nice booklets and photos and interviews. I like the gimmicks- the slipmat, the stencil. I'm looking forward to the Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds action figures and New Order playmobil set. I like the having-everything-in-one-place feeling. But we are being suckered here. They know we want it. They know some people (middle aged men mainly) will part with increasing sums of money for this stuff, despite already owning most or all of the material, and having 'upgraded' before, lp to cd, single cd to 'legacy' edition. Are we being catered for or exploited? I suppose it depends how much you want the slipmat, the t-shirt, the booklet, the photos, the remastered album (and why wasn't the original album mastered very well then?).

This is Fuer Immer off Neu!2, the opening track, ten minutes of aural bliss that doesn't change very much but leaves you feeling better than when it started. I'm off to covet box sets on the internet.

Fuer Immer (forever).mp3

Very Cosmic

How about some krautrock? Oh don't groan you lot.

In 1974 Michael Rother (from Neu!) joined with Moebius and Roedelius (both from Cluster) to make the Musik Von Harmonia album. This track (song isn't really the right word) is Dino, lovely swathes of sound and melody with rhythm driving it on. The album also contains tracks called Sehr Kosmisch and Hausmusik- both of it's time and ahead of time. I've got a feeling the last time I played this in full the even numbered tracks were good and odd numbered tracks less interesting, but I could be imagining it.

There's something about all this snow and ice which seems quite teutonic. If you're interested BBC 4's excellent krautrock documentary is repeated tonight at 10.30. Worth staying up for.

04 Dino.wma

La Dusseldorf 'Silver Cloud'

If the thought of dragging your weary self into work tomorrow is bringing you down this Sunday evening, perhaps this lovely, dreamy slice of post-Krautrock (don't let that word put you off) will ease the pain slightly. La Dusseldorf were Klaus Dinger from NEU!, Thomas Dinger and Hans Lampe and this is off their 1976 debut album Dusseldorf, a pristine 1976 pressing of which I snaffled on ebay a while back. Quite lovely this Silver Cloud.

silvercloud.mp3

Neu! 'Hallogallo'

About ten years ago I decided to get into krautrock, probably after reading someone going on about it in an interview. I then saw some obscure music tv programme where a group of musicians and journalists were sat around discussing it. The music playing in the background sounded impossibly good. So I went out and in a £20 spree (no internet then to go and find tasters for free) bought Can's Ege Bamyesi and The Faust Tapes. The Can lp was good, impressive, could see what they were talking about. The Faust Tapes was unfathomable. But neither sounded like what I'd heard on the telly. My interest waned, until at least the next payday, probably longer. Later on, I took the krautrock plunge again, and bought two Neu! lps, Neu! and Neu!2 and suddenly it all made sense. All that talk of 'motorik rhythms' and 'treated guitars' (both phrases sounded really good) were there, especially in the ten minute opening tracks of those albums and the third, Neu!75. Music to lose yourself in. Driving pulse beat, repetition, warm sounds. Fantastic.

I still can't make head or tail of The Faust Tapes mind.

Hallogallo.mp3