Neu! - Neu!

Sometimes you get the feeling that music has been specifically designed for taking drugs to. The choice would be yours of course, though i would avoid paracetomol. Our dad tried it and he just ended up looking foolish.

There are not a lot of tracks to talk about here, because we're on a Kosmiche trip. It's taken me a long time to try out this music - Kosmische, i mean - because i always suspected it would be the kind of sound that i would have absorbed hungrily as a teen, but would be too cold to move me now. Well, i would have absorbed this hungrily then assuming that i had the emotional intelligence to understand it, and it has managed to overwhelm me now. Some things appear at their place in time and have no link to anything other than itself. Contained and free flowing, it steps out of time as a constant. It is the answer to a question that has hung in the air. Things that you thought you knew the answer to. What does warmth feel like? What is a chemical high? Questions that are answered within.

Imagine a film student looking for utopian music that aptly befits their vision of a spotless technological future. Trying to capture the distance we have moved from an organic world so that their gleaming images of future hygiene can be perfectly accompanied. Then realising that the only truth in their final year project was that they got the soundtrack just right. That's Neu! then... Partly.

There is dissonance and absolute beauty in this music. Hallogallo is incredible. Ten minutes of sunbeams. Superman before he hooked up with John Williams, having a little morning fly over New Zealand's South Island on a sunny day, just because he can. Maybe stopping for a roll up. He may have seen the harm that cigarettes do to your health, but he knew of their delicate delights. What Alfred Dunhill would have called, "the gentle art of smoking."

Tit.

Anyway. We do have to come down a bit, and a brief moment of experiment with sound reminds us that we are earthbound. Not for long though, as the gorgeous White Sea (or is that lake?) washes your feet. Lapping at your toes as sparks of reflected light blind you gently. On your own or sharing a moment with a close friend. A brief and lasting connection. I felt real love today. I felt accepted. And then you're at sea. Gulls overhead. More light. The sound of your skin turning to honey.

Pneumatic drills. On the outskirts of the City. Negativland. All still Neu! but angry droney, not at all spaced out. Neu! aren't freaked out by this. They quite happily describe it with repetition and muted rage. And yet they remain strangely relaxed. Possibly in a queue of traffic. Turn the engine over, motor for a bit. Watch as enormous iron feet block your path. A robot pounds along the white lines in the road, clearing the way. You at a safe distance behind. Now drive! DRIVE!

But once they leave this behind, or perhaps as they go to bed, a quiet, whispered voice talks you through to the end. Oars hitting water. Remorse. It was nice but now it's gone.

I'm a little older than I once was. A statement which is possibly profound, possibly stupid. Neu! is at my 40th birthday party. The picture and person of Dorian Gray. And only three years younger.

Neu! doesn't do what other albums would. Keep the vibe. Let you drift. This must be the point. It's not about you. It's about what Neu! want to say. For people who want to try this for the first time, it is deeply rewarding. Be prepared to be confounded. It has the ability to be the background and the focal point at the same time.

There are plenty of places to find out more about Neu! Only in the music itself can you find the future so brilliantly articulated by modern machines and ancient intruments. Guitars speaking animal tongues. Birds with metal beaks. This really is very special and features pieces of music that you've always known you should have in your life.

Beauty and the Beast.

Mega Breakfast - The Chap

This was a total find. Unbelievably good fortune. Browsing through Fopp one day i found it in the Dance section, stared at it, read the 'John Peel' review and looked at the track titles. Something about the phrase, "Proper Rock for Real Folk" drew me in. I listened to it, thought it was OK and then played it again a couple of days later.

Then i was totally screwed. There's something faintly ridiculous about the whole thing. It seeps in very easily and, like Mr. Tickle, can't help but go for those parts of the body that make you giggle and jerk your body unexpectedly. This is a very funny album. It's also packed full of great ideas, unusual rhythms, and the odd, spectacular blast of rock guitar. It's a genuine example of how well electronica and rock can work together.

There is a real sense of people at work here. Not casually. Not too cool for school. There's nothing off hand about it. There's a degree of restraint but only because anything else would detract from the overall feel of what they do. And when they let go, it just flies. The vocals are consciously sung in very clipped, very English tones: partly for effect, and partly because that's exactly what is needed. Darnce Floor, not dance floor.

Mega Breakfast is complete. It starts, and finishes, and you feel like you've heard everything they wanted to do at that time. It's also perverse. Neat lawns, academic institutions, and kids with too much money discussing debauchery just moments before a career at the bar. Self assured and with the heritage to back it up should they get into trouble with the law at some stage.

I played this to Chaz, who thought it may be what the Cardiacs were now up to. This is entirely understandable (and if you've not heard any, R.E.S. is the place to get a good start with them). It's lunatic and critical. The beats are incredibly tight but allow themselves to trip over their own feet, all the while ticking metronomically. It is the feel of the Cardiacs without the potential for striking absolute terror into your heart and leaving you with a sense that the world is indeed ruined. The Chap do it with a cool gaze, but the kind of cool that makes you want to be them, and makes you trust their judgement. You'd buy them a drink, not throw it at them.

The use of sound is humourous and gleeful, like a teenager on LSD coming to the realisation that normality is ludicrous, and spouting adolescent rhetoric with wit and passion. They sample what can only be a ruler being twanged on a school desk. How can that not be joyful? Now imagine a band performing this, bleeps, sampled violins, and occasional impersonations of the Red Army choir singing in English.

Come on, Come on cloner,
Clone me another me,
My generation needs another me.
Me and me...
Hearts of gold, bodies of lust,
Forbidden love reach the stars...

And when they sing 'stars' you arrive at a questioning peak in their discourse. It is a three dot statement...

Come into my Discopad. Caution me with your slippers.

And then restrained, spooky, lightly picked guitar. Gradually building to a clean rock frenzy, drums in time and out of synch. Coughing up phlegm. Scratched sounds, monotonous delivery, all insinuating a dangerous lust too polite to scream, wanting so much to reach that point.

Hello! Hello!
Blood Blood Blood.
We will perform surgery.
Your body has things that throb.
Hello! Hello! Surgery.

Clinical, detached. Shagging on the bonnet of a Bentley. Not a mark on the bonnet when you've finished.

Oh! Where's my soul gone?
Oh! Where is home?

Wuss Wuss is just gorgeous. Beautifully sung and yearning. Four minutes away from all the stress to smoke a cigarette and reflect. Not beaten yet. But longing for something. At the start of listening to the album you would not expect a tune like that to appear. When it does, it fits perfectly. It also confirms that you are in the presence of truly wonderful music.

Outer space is not a better place, Grace
Proper Rock for Real Folk,
Art Art Art, don't make no rave, Dave
Proper songs about girls and clubbing.

As they say themselves: proper songs, real emotions.