NEU! 2

The story behind Neu!'s second has been told plenty of times before already. The guys ran out of budget before the album was finished and they had no better idea then to fill up the blanks by repeating parts of the main groove at increased or slowed down speeds. Well, you can't blame them for lacking a sense of humour.

The impact isn't nearly as strong as the first Neu! album, but it still starts pretty much the same. Neuschnee78 is an experimental collage of sounds forced ahead by an insistent one-chord groove. Simple is effective and rhythm is everything, and if you're in the right state of mind the effect is quite entrancing.

Super16 is the first of the fillers. It's just the drumbeat of Neuschnee78 processed through an echo machine and gradually slowing down till it comes through a grinding halt. Stupid? Redundant? Maybe, but there's a primal enchantment to this beat that tends to endure these experimentations. After the ambient interlude Neuschnee, the beat goes on on Cassetto. Crazed vocal are added to the background. I really like this one. It's like an experimental version of Jesus & Mary Chain, only this one came a good 10 years earlier.

With Super78 things get rather silly, as can be expected when playing stuff at double speed. Anything played at double speed is silly. Playing at reduced speed doesn't make for a more comfortable listen but at least the slow sludge of Hallo Excentrico has the advantage of its threatening atmosphere.

Super is the Super78 at normal speed. It works better naturally but it reveals the band was not only in financial trouble but also stuck in a creative dead-end. It's a great groove again but it's virtually the same as Neuschnee78. It's followed by 3 more pointless slow-fast-slow mixes of other tracks. At the end comes Lila Engel, a great bit of proto-punk noise with a slightly different groove then Neuschnee78.

If you own the Neu! debut already, there's little need for this album. But it's not a complete failure either. I think the 23 minutes of original material still warrants 3 stars.