Neu! Reveal Release Details for Career-Spanning Vinyl Box Set

BY Brock ThiessenPublished Mar 9, 2010

If you're a Neu! fan, chances are you've been itching for the Krautrock pioneers' highly awesome-sounding vinyl box set ever since news broke of the release last year. Well, the wait is finally over: Grönland Records has announced that the UK imprint will release the massive five-LP set this spring on May 10.

As expected, the limited-edition vinyl set features all three Neu! studio albums from the duo's Michael Rother and the late Klaus Dinger: Neu!, Neu! 2 and Neu! 75. Sweetening the deal even further will also be Neu! 4 (or Neu! 86 as Rother prefers to call it) and '72 Live! In Dusseldorf, which were illegally released by Dinger in the late '90s though Japanese label Captain Trip. Both the albums have been recently remastered and reworked by Rother, and include some of the pair's more recent studio recordings.

Exclaim! spoke to Rother about the box set last year, and he shed some light on the changes that would be taking place with Neu! 86 and '72 Live!

"Klaus added some material that I would have not used," Rother said. "The commercial trash for instance, it's not so interesting anymore. It wasn't so interesting in the '80s. And there are some recordings I discovered in my archives that I actually had forgotten, recordings we did in the first studio that we didn't continue working on. So I'm reflecting on many ideas, making changes and listening to that material... I'm also quite optimistic that what I find will find more recognition than the release Klaus did in the '90s with some of that [added] material."

Along with all the music included in the set, it will feature a vinyl-sized booklet, which Rother said would feature various essays on Neu!, as well as several previously unseen photographs from throughout the group's career, including some from famed photographer Anton Corbijn, who took the photo found above.

Speaking of the photographer, Rother said, "Anton Corbijn did a photo session with Neu! in 2000. Unfortunately, at the time Klaus said no, and we couldn't release the photos. He didn't like them. At the time, Klaus was still quite unhappy and he looked very fierce in some of the photos. I'm just guessing that he was astonished when he saw the photos and that's why he didn't want others to see them."

Topping everything off, the set also includes a Neu! T-shirt, a stencil of the iconic Neu! logo and a download code for the entire set. Rother said the new version of Neu! 86 would likely see a single CD release and that even more previously unreleased Neu! material may come exclusively as downloads. However, there is no word on those releases just yet.

To read more of Exclaim!'s interview with Michael Rother, click here.

Thanks to Pitchfork for the heads-up on the release date.

Latest Coverage