1972 COUNTDOWN: #4

1972 COUNTDOWN: #4 — #3

4 NEU! — NEU!

‘Hallogallo’ fades in with a repeated guitar dot over a strange percussive clack. It insinuates itself into the room and your consciousness, an hypnotic groove, repetitive yet captivating. Welcome to the strange and wonderful world of Neu!

The beginning of the Neu! story is part of the early Kraftwerk story. Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger were invited to join Kraftwerk founders and fellow Düsseldorf natives Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter as the latter pair were exploring new directions for their experimental combo. A scheduled TV appearance on the German rock program Beat Club in June 1971 was billed as Kraftwerk yet when it came time to record, Hütter was AWOL. Based on head count it would be just as reasonable to call the resulting performance Neu! with Schneider as Kraftwerk with Rother and Dinger. If you listen closely the improvised beginning of the 11 minute piece evokes the Kraftwerk recordings of the time but then morphs into something much more identifiable as Neu!.

Later that year, Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger teamed up with lynchpin producer Conny Plank and recorded the self-titled album, released on the Brain label in early 1972. The ten minute opening epic of ‘Hallogallo’ tells you all you need to know about Neu!, but there is more on the LP.

‘Sonderangebot’ (Special Offer) So much space you get lost in it. Something absent; waiting maybe.

‘Weissensee’ (White Lake) There’s an unresolved sadness in the descending melody. Like gazing out a rain-smeared window, sheltered but alone.

‘Im Glück’ (Lucky, or perhaps Happiness) A slow drifting dance on an electronic lake.

‘Negativland’ (just add an ‘e’) Aliens using jack-hammers give way to guitar squall… then the slow bass-led groove kicks in. The guitars swoop and shriek above. Capricious tempo changes confuse… this is ‘Hallogallo’ for the criminally disturbed.

‘Lieber Hönig’ (Prefer honey, or perhaps Dear Honey) A skeletal guitar melody overlaid with a laryngitis vocal. Effective drone. The watery oars from ‘Im Glück’ return. A purposely unpolished finish to a ground-breaking album.

The shape shifting between driving rhythmic repetition, heart-piercingly beautiful melodic wisps and uncomfortable experimentalism ultimately fragments the cohesion of the album. The result is a flawed masterpiece that remains fresh and engrossing over forty years on, not least because of those flaws.

* * *

3 SANTANA — CARAVANSERAI

Here’s what I wrote about my first exposure to Santana’s brilliant fourth album (or, equally, their fourth brilliant album).
‘The needle thunks onto the vinyl and a moment later, emerging from the background crackles comes the quintessentially summer sound of crickets, their phased whistlechoir being joined by a keening sax sounding an evening call to prayer. The bass and percussion enter, building very slowly with carefully placed guitar notes then sustained electric piano chords like ancient temple bells. I am entranced.’

After the introduction of ‘Eternal Caravan Of Reincarnation’ the energy picks up with rolling, soaring glory in ‘Waves Within’, powered by the transcendental guitar of Carlos Santana but given a solid grounding by the percussion section of Michael Shrieve and James ‘Mingo’ Lewis.

The segue into ‘Look Up (To See What’s Coming Down)’ provides a change up to a Latin soul-funk groove of hip-swinging potency. Greg Rolie’s organ adds smouldering urgency echoed by Santana’s guitar lines. This in turn flows into the first song, ‘Just In Time To See The Sun’, delivered in impassioned rock style by the organist.

Things settle down for the spacious ‘Song Of The Wind’, a superb showcase for the leader’s six string stylings. The incorporation of jazz fusion textures and exploratory solos into the band was the defining feature of Caravanserai, making it a perhaps little harder for fans of the first three albums to access, but ensuring its timelessness. Side one concludes with ‘All the love in the universe’ where, after an attention capturing introduction, a human chorus introduces the second vocal, an uplifting lyric that seeks to share Santana’s commitment to his spiritual growth. (cf. the Santana/McLaughlin collaboration from the following year, 1973’s Love Devotion and Surrender).

New thoughts will purify my mind

And clean my body

New lives will fall together

Like an endless story

Now I’m an unbeliever and sceptic of eye-rolling insistence, yet by the end of this side—with the voices, pumping organ, ebullient bass lines and soul-piercing guitar—I’m ready to convert, don the white robe and eshew all worldly pollutants of the spirit. Except my multiple copies of Caravanserai. Perhaps, then, a little way short of full Enlightenment.

Caravanserai belongs in the bright constellation of progressive rock albums that transcend categories. Like the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s Birds of Fire it will not be eclipsed, no matter how many decades pass.

[Released 11 October 1972]