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. 

Rother

One of my Christmas presents was a copy of Flammende Herzen, a recent vinyl re-issue of Michael Rother's 1977 solo debut. My kids did really well I think you'll agree, West German progressive cosmische music being an area of knowledge for them both (with a little help from Santa Krautrock). I've written about Flammende Herzen before- five soaring, melodic instrumental songs recorded at Conny Plank's studio with Rother on guitars, bass, organ, synths and keyboards and Jaki Leibezeit on drums. It's a wonderful album, Rother playing fluid, free melodies, chiming guitars and toplines. I can't recommend it enough and the vinyl re-issue sounds really good too.

Zyklodrom

Since then I've bought his third solo album, 1979's Katzenmusik. On this one Rother, Leibezeit and Plank play fourteen instrumentals, all called Katzenmusik (and then numbered 1 to 14 and split into two suites one on each side of the record). Rother restricts himself to five note recurring melodies on the guitar, intricate and optimistic, self contained themes and tunes. Really lovely stuff. Annoyingly neither album came with a download code and I don't have a rip of any of Katzenmusik at the moment so I can only offer a Youtube clip.



Now I need to fill in the gap and get Rother's second solo album, 1978's Sterntaler. I'm also kicking myself for forgetting to go to see him play when he did a gig at Gorilla a few months ago. Dumbkopf!

The Cataclysmic Impact Of Their Clash

'It is as I have feared' says Dr Strange, 'the cataclysmic impact of their clash threatens to destroy them both!' This frame comes form the Strange Tales comic. Eternity, created by Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, is a sentient force, a cosmic and abstract entity, immortal and unaffected by the passage of time and can warp space and time. Steve Ditko's art goes even further than that.

Michael Rother's 1977 album Flammende Herzen was his solo debut, recorded after his time in Neu! and Cluster. It is only 5 tracks long but every second and note is perfect. Rother plays guitar, synths, keys, bass and percussion. Jaki Liebezeit drums and Conny Plank produces. Harmonic, cosmic, unaffected by the passage of time.

Karussell

Jaki

Jaki Liebezeit has died aged 78. There aren't too many drummers- forgive me drummers if I'm showing my ignorance here- who you can say are unique and recognisable. His playing, his rhythms, on Can's records are otherworldly, like nothing else. As well as Can he played with Jah Wobble, Michael Rother and Brian Eno. Again, there aren't many drummers whose name alone makes me want to check out something they played on. Jazz trained, reluctantly pushed into rock 'n' roll in West German beat groups in the 1960s he (and the rest of Can) came up with something entirely new that was also culturally significant. Can were determined to reject all that their fathers had stood for, perhaps more significant in Germany in the 60s than other many countries, and avoid the influence of the USA too. They wanted to make a music which was new and European with the rhythms well to the fore. His Can companion Holger Czukay was asked by a journalist if Jaki was like a drum machine. 'More accurate' he replied.

Future Days

This footage shows B-Boys poppin' to Can's Vitamin C back in the day.



That is the real deal I believe.

RIP Jaki.

Zyklodrom

I've had an eventful forty eight hours. On Saturday we took the kids into town to watch the Manchester Pride parade followed by going to see my brother who was taking part in a live graffiti event in a beer garden in The Angel pub. The two djs were spinning old school hip-hop, dub and electro and a good dollop of Kraftwerk, all of which sounded great in the faint Mancunian sunshine. Early evening came and we raced home so I could get out to one of the local Sale pubs to watch a punk covers band called Cheapskates who played a set which was 75% Clash songs. All good fun.

Yesterday we went out into Cheshire to visit my parents. I cycled there, about thirty miles through good roads and sunshine. Just arriving near their house I snapped a spoke. The car was full so I had to try to get home a few hours later with the broken spoke. All was going well. Ten miles from home near Tatton Park a second spoke went. Total pisser. I had to await rescue in a pub made more bearable by a very nice pint of Manchester Pale Ale. Today I will be going to the bike shop.

I pulled out Neu! man Michael Rother's 1977 solo album Flammende Herzen the other day. It doesn't sound like it was made that long ago. Completely instrumental and really very good indeed. Jaki Leibezeit plays drums. Rother plays everything else.

Zyklodrom

How Much Are They?

It's turning into a kind of interactive week at Bagging Area with reader suggestions and comments leading onto the next day's posting, in a seamless blog-segue. Or something like that. Yesterday Echorich said he needed a Balearic compilation for a drive he's undertaking across the US and went looking for a Jah Wobble, Holger Czukay and The Edge 12". I' afraid I am philosophically and morally unable to post anything involving the tax avoiding, overblown Irish rock band. And this song from Full Circle in 1982 is better anyway, featuring also some girls who turned up at the studio asking 'How much are they?'



A little bit of internet digging led to this re-working/re-edit by Utopus, which is pretty smart.

Guten Tag

I unfolded myself off the bus, after thirty six hours from Krakow to north west England yesterday. Sleeping sitting up is a skill I've not quite got the hang of and my back has suffered. But our school trip to Krakow and Berlin was fantastic, all the moreso because we were in Berlin last Sunday night when Germany won the world cup. The streets of Berlin were flooded with thousands of Germans, most draped in the colours. We'd passed the Brandenberg Gate early on Saturday and had a look at the fan park but decided that keeping sixty-four teenagers safe while watching the final might be tricky. Eventually we all watched it on a big screen in the square outside our hotel and Hauptbahnhof, the main railway station. This ensured a constant flow of fans before and after the match. It was crackers and probably a once in a lifetime experience- watching a country win the world cup in that country's capital city. It certainly won't happen as a England fan.

Berlin is an amazing city, one which I want to return to. There's so much to see and do- in two days we squeezed in sections of wall, Checkpoint Charlie, a trip up the TV tower, Alexanderplatz with its 60s concrete architecture, Sachsenhausen and the Olympic Stadium. Seeing some of the wall was a highlight for me- something that was such a key part of world history and from my lifetime. After Berlin we went to Krakow, which has a beautiful square and buildings, and drank tea (black tea with cold milk, the English way) in Noworolski Cafe, frequented by Lenin in the mid 1910s. And had a couple of Polish beers.

I've downloaded a few of the pics off my phone here...

Holger Czukay of Can, was born in Gdansk, Poland and raised in Germany. He has recently remixed some solo tracks from his 1977 album Der Osten Is Rot and issued them on 10" vinyl through a Berlin based record label, Gronland Records. Click on the link for loads of grooviness. The remixed Sudetenland, with Jah Wobble, Jaki Leibezeit and Conny Plank, is out right now and you can listen to it here.

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

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