la! NEU? - Year Of The Tiger (1998)

The final la! NEU? post!  Fittingly, Year Of The Tiger, named after the furry postcard sent to Dinger (pictured on the cover), was their final studio release.  It appeared in 1998 just after Goldregen, but in contrast to that album's fully acoustic aesthetic, it focused on the electronic, beat-driven side of la! NEU?.  Also in contrast to Goldregen's short pieces, Year Of The Tiger consists of just two tracks, one of which is 32 minutes long and the other 33.

Before these, there's a minute-long 'trailer' for Blue Point Underground, a group based around krautrock legend Eberhard Kranemann, who Dinger had just reconnected with.  They produced one album for Captain Trip, which I've still to hear.  Back with la! NEU? though, and in late 1997 then began work on fleshing out a long keyboard piece of Rembrandt Lensink's with Dinger's drumming, Viktoria Wehrmeister's vocals and a hell of a lot of phasing effects.  The result, Autoportrait Rembrandt, grooves along nicely with enough variety to not outstay its welcome, and was performed again at the final la! NEU? concert.

Also featuring at the Kunsthalle gig, effectively giving the listener a full live version of Year Of The Tiger to compare & contrast, was Notre Dame.  The original studio version here fills its epic running time with a drum loop, mellow guitars from Dinger and his 80s guitarist Spinello, and a gorgeous vocal performance from Viktoria.  Little bits of electronics, cheerful conversation and other ambient sounds drop in and out as the piece goes on, all adding up to possibly the most lovely extended track in the la! NEU? catalogue.

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la! NEU? complete catalogue at SGTG: Düsseldorf | Tokyo '96 Live | Zeeland | Goldregen | Year Of The Tiger (this post) | Live At Kunsthalle Düsseldorf

la! NEU? - Live At On Air West, Tokyo, 3 Dec 1996 (rel. 1998-9)

Continuing the la! NEU? posts from last week's feature of their debut release, today focuses on the three and a half hours of their second concert (the first, a day prior, remains unreleased; not sure if it was even recorded).  You'll notice the 'Vol. 2' in the artwork above; I'll be discussing these two albums in concert order, rather than release order.  Yep, 'Vol. 2' is the first half of the gig.

In a spectacular 'what could have been', this December 1996 trip to Japan was originally planned as a NEU! reunion, to which Michael Rother wouldn't commit.  Offering his new band instead, Dinger went to Osaka with Andreas Reihse, Viktoria Wehrmeister and the rest of the touring la! NEU? lineup he'd assembled, played the aforementioned first concert, then traveled to Tokyo the next day (the first 20 seconds of Disc 1 here) to set up at the On Air West venue (the following five minutes).

As with la! NEU?'s farewell performance in Düsseldorf, the introduction (here titled Tension) is a gentle ambient keyboard piece.  The calm is then blown away by the La Düsseldorf track Viva, in which lead guitarist Dirk Flader is particularly incendiary.  Dinger then asks if anyone knows Hero '96, presumably to check if anyone had bought the new album (that had only been out a couple days!), and a fine version of that track follows, with Wehrmeister finding a new confidence, even appearing to channel Patti Smith towards the end, swapping "piss on the industry"'s with Dinger.

On Disc 2, the concert progresses into an improvisational section for a total of 40 minutes, including Dinger playing a tape of music and talking that he'd received from a fan (a Brit-expat in the US), taking the democracy of his new group to an absurd conclusion.  la! NEU? return to their own music with the sweet, Dear Prudence-quoting Mayday, then the set looks backwards again - first to 1985 and America, and then...

Tokyo Disc 1 link
Tokyo Disc 2 link

...all the way back to 1978, where it began.  At this point, some further listening instructions are required to follow the concert order: play Disc 2 of 'Cha Cha 2000, Live in Tokyo Vol. 1' first, and Disc 1 afterwards.  Crap, just realised that sentence, and the artwork above, are huge spoilers for the last song in the set.  Yeah, the last song.  Which takes up two CDs.  Think this is a bit overkill, even for Dinger?  That it'll get a bit boring at, what, 104 minutes?  Well, it's not for nothing that this is la! NEU?'s bestselling release.

Cha Cha 2000 Tokyo '96 is nothing less than Klaus Dinger's most epic expression of his greatest composition, and for me is just endlessly inspirational.  Each section of the original 20-minute song gets fully turned inside and out, and rather than played to death, played into new life by a group who were all adept at long-form improvisation, and would remain so.  It builds up and falls back endlessly, features loads of odd little extras (i.e. dropped in tapes, and at one point inviting audience members on to the stage to sing along) and at the start of Disc 1 (remember, the final part of the song and concert) has a beautifully extended quiet improv before the final buildup starts at the halfway point of the disc.  Is this the greatest Cha Cha ever?  You decide.

Tokyo Cha Cha Disc 2 link
Tokyo Cha Cha Disc 1 link

la! NEU? - Düsseldorf (1996)

Will be completing my posts of the la! NEU? catalogue over the next few weeks, following a well-timed request (well-timed as in, I'm always up for a good Klaus Dinger binge).  So let's start from the beginning.  Following the breakup of Die Engel Des Herrn, Dinger jammed around a bit, including with new Düsseldorf group Kreidler, and for one session in December 1995 invited their drummer to join him and two members of the DEDH concert lineup.

The result was the 33 minutes of gloriously unhinged chaos that appears here as D. 22-12-95; what was just a fun jam session at the time wasn't intended for any serious release until the preparation of this album the following year.  Moments of motorik magic arise frequently from the free-for-all, and the freewheeling la! NEU? aesthetic was born.

Prior to this, in May 1995, Dinger had already recorded a solo track in which a deliberate Sister Ray homage became a cathartic diatribe against contemporary society and the music industry.  The acerbic fire of Néondian was very much still burning in Hero '96, titled for continuity with the original Hero of 1975.  Kreidler's keyboard player Andreas Reihse, who was to become a key member of la! NEU?, suggested a backing vocal overdub, and recommended his friend Viktoria Wehrmeister who was in another band, Superbilk.  Another piece of the la! NEU? puzzle clicked into place.

Now signed to the Japanese label Captain Trip, who were already reissuing Néondian and releasing DEDH material, Dinger completed the first la! NEU? album with two versions of his song Mayday, one with Reihse and one with Wehrmeister.  In the new band's short four-year lifespan, there were several more to come...

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Zeeland
Gold Regen
Live at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf

la! NEU? - Gold Regen (1998)

One of the final la! NEU? studio recordings, Gold Regen was also the mellowest, and featured no electronic instruments.  More recognisable from previous efforts by this band was the structure of the album, Klaus Dinger foregoing any conventional wisdom for simply dropping in rough-cut tracks from lengthy jam sessions in whatever order he pleased, like a box of unsorted photographs.  With mother Renate starring in the opening track, and the Dinger brothers reunited in four others for the first time in 15 years, Klaus did actually refer to Gold Regen as "a family album", which suits the homely loveliness of the music just fine.

For all of the above notes about la! NEU? albums being randomly structured, Gold Regen does actually fit into three distinct sections.  The first of these is the two-minute opener, Zeeland Wunderbar, a slightly corny but sweetly executed (you want more sleigh bells after the Eastman post the other week? We got 'em) song by Mutter Dinger that also featured in la! NEU?'s final concert.

The second section is half an hour of improvisational excerpts based around Rembrandt Lensink's piano, Viktoria Wehrmeister's gentle vocals, and occasional percussion (Klaus) and violin (Thomas).  The mood is mostly sedate and melancholy, perhaps best exemplified in the gorgeous Lansam Bewegt, aber nicht Traurig, with occasional diversions into mid-tempo jamming on Strahomaso and Dinger Brothers mit Remmi & Wicki.  

After one final 'Intermezzo' from Lensink on piano, the stage is set for the third part of the album: 25 minutes of blissful ambient drift from just Viktoria on vocals (with a little percussion on its middle track) and Klaus on harmonium.  Based on an increasingly slowed-down version of the intro to Die Engel Des Herrn's title track, these three tracks are almost indescribably beautiful; another reviewer once likened them as 'the sound of being in the womb', or words to that effect.  Highly recommended.

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la! NEU? - Zeeland (Live '97) (1997)

Second album from Klaus Dinger's loose, improvisatory 90s ensemble.  Despite the title, this isn't a proper live album like the Kunsthalle concert, but a live-in-the-studio effort.  Zeeland was the first la! NEU? album I bought, and it remains a favourite, with more than enough sweetness and charm to forgive the rough edges.

The album kicks off with To Get You Real, centred on a couple of riffs from Dinger's heavily reverbed guitar, and Viktoria Wehrmeister alternatively singing an insistent single line over one riff, and overlaying the other one with subtle, cooing vocalese.  Following that are two lengthy jams that focus more on electronics, the first one mellow, bouncy and gently melodic, the second more rough and uptempo.

After this, there's another rather sweet, if characteristically underdeveloped Dinger song, Satellite, before a bit of a grab-bag of odd inclusions: a thirty-second trailer for the forthcoming solo album by keyboardist Rembrandt Lensink, a rough demo of an elegaic performance by Dinger's mother, Renate, and six minutes of Insekt, an electronics and voice improv.  The final track, another long guitar-based song, is worth sticking around for though.  Silly Face is a wistful, closing-time gaze into an empty glass, like the Velvet Underground's After Hours slowed down to a sleepy crawl.  Wehrmeister's vocal is suitably slurred-sounding, but the affecting lyrics are still comprehensible, and the end result, set to a gentle tambourine tap, is quite lovely.

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La! NEU? - Live At Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (rec. 1998, rel. 2001)

Final release from Klaus Dinger's mid-late 90s group, where the "inventor" (his preferred term) of Neu!, La Düsseldorf and Die Engel Des Herrn decided to work with younger musicians, plus his dear old mum, on his most free-form music ever.  Thanks to the deference/indulgence of Japanese label Captain Trip, more La! NEU? releases were made available than for any other Dinger band, with their resulting catalogue being more a series of fast-and-loose documents rather than polished albums - but this remains a key part of their charm.

La! NEU? were effectively defunct after this July 1998 farewell concert, and Dinger's last chapter before his death in 2008 was to team up with a group of Japanese musicians - including Kazuyuki Onouchi, who helped prepare the Kunsthalle recording for release in 2001.  One day I'll post Japandorf, which was a rather sweet posthumous collection, but for today here's a great summary of La! NEU?, concentrating in its first half on Year Of The Tiger, possibly their most satisfying studio album.

Both of Tiger's epic improvisations, Autoportrait Rembrandt and Notre Dame, are here in fine versions that display this group's freewheeling improv aesthetic at its best.  On Disc 2, there's a fair bit of faffing around that could perhaps have been cut, but La! NEU?'s final original piece The Hit, an endearingly odd, perky update of the Notre Dame rhythm track, and a valedictory run through La Düsseldorf's Time are worth waiting for.

Disc 1
Disc 2