Everything Old Is Neu! Again

It was a bit of a Krautrock event at International House on Sunday night as an all but sold-out crowd of about 400 gathered to listen intently to an ultra-rare performance of music by the uber-influential 1970s German band Neu! (The exclamation point is part of the name, which means "new" and is pronounced "noy.") The trio that performed the exacting, precisely propulsive instrumental set of six songs, each of 10 minutes in duration, wasn't exactly Neu! It consisted of guitarist and programmer Michael Rother (that's him pictured with the late drummer Klaus Dinger, back in the day) along with some new Neu! guys: Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley and bass player Aaron Mullan. The official bill was a mouthful: "Hallogallo 2010 performs the music of Neu!, Harmonia and Michael Rother."

For pale faced fans of elemental, minimalist electronic muisc - and anybody into the immersive drone of say, Stereolab, Sonic Youth or Wilco's "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" - this was a close to actual Neu! as they were ever going to get. And they were not to be disappointed, as Rother slowly built it up to no-speed-limit velocity on the opening "Hallogallo," and later made sometimes pretty, never ugly music out what sounded like samples of water dropping into a shower drain or a guitar made to sound like an electric lathe, and Shelley's tribal drone drumming brought the thumping racket to life. "Sehr Deutsch," my ex-Berliner colleague Dan Rubin said - "It's very German." And indeed, it felt like Rother and crew had engineered a transporting locked-in ride around the Autobahn before efficiently dropping us back in West Philly while the night was still young. Steve Klinge's interview with Rother from Friday's Inquirer is here, and a clip of Rother, Shelley and Mullan at this year's Primavera Festival in Barcelona is below.

Previously:  Big Star's Andy Hummel, RIP