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.