Getting to hear 'Neu!' after all these years is a strange experience. The album in most parts still sounds fresh but it is hard not to listen with future ears into the past, back into the future again, mapping the routes Stereolab, Spacemen 3, Boredoms, Basic Channel, The Orb, Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine took from this album. It can sound that overwhelmingly influential. On the other hand much claims have been made on behalf of 'Neu 2' (1973) being something of a precursor of studio-wizardry and dub manipulation. The story is well known: Neu! running out of studio time only have finished a couple of tracks to decide at the last moment to re-record the finished tracks on different speeds (the slowed down tracks are a better listen than the ones that sound like Speedy Gonzalez rocking out). Undoubtedly a nice solution, interesting and controversial but it doesn't make 'Neu 2' a good record (although 'Für Immer' and 'Neuschnee' are excellent updates of the motorik aesthetic). Nice to complete your collection with but you're better off investigating Rother's work with Harmonia. After a couple of years of working apart Rother and Dinger returned to work on the third Neu! album that had to be made due to contractual obligations. What sounds like a recipe for disaster actually turned 'Neu 75' into a masterpiece of new German music, it's their 'Future Days', 'Rubycon', 'Trans Europe Express' or 'Musik von Harmonia'. The first half of 'Neu 75' is pure daydreaming bliss: 'Isi' is the usual motorik opener, a short relative of Kraftwerk's 'Autobahn'. 'Seeland' is a fine down-tempo guitar-led tune but the centrepiece of the album is 'Leb' Wohl', a sublime sun-kissed piece of ambient consisting of nothing more than slow Satiesque piano notes, a humming voice and some breaking waves as background noise. It's the point where Neu! enter nirvana, they finally find the peace they searched for, they dissolve into eternal newness…to be born again.