Neu!

Named after the German word for “new,” the duo of guitarist Michael Rother and drummer Klaus Dinger lived up to their billing with music that was radical even by the standards of West Germany’s remarkably creative rock scene of the ‘70s. Both men had played in an early incarnation of Kraftwerk before forming their own project in Düsseldorf in 1971. Made with producer Conny Plank, 1972’s Neu! and 1973’s Neu! 2 established an exhilarating and original sound that combined Rother’s fluid guitar lines with Dinger’s motorik beat, as his minimalist drumming style later became known. Though the pair’s increasingly divergent sensibilities led to Neu!’s breakup in 1975, they had time for one more masterpiece in Neu! 75, an album that was equally split between Rother’s ambient-style compositions and proto-punk rockers like Dinger’s ferocious “Hero.” A brief reunion in the mid-‘80s yielded the music that eventually surfaced as Neu! 4 in 1995, a reminder of Neu!’s profound influence on Stereolab, Sonic Youth, Radiohead, and other torch-bearers of experimental rock.