For a band whose albums have never been released outside Germany, Neu! cast a disproportionately long shadow over modern music. The gliding pulse of their hypnotic beats and their coldly dissonant guitar lines pop up all over the avant-garde, among artists as diverse as Stereolab, David Bowie and Public Image Limited. In fact, almost all forms of electronic music owe a huge debt to Neu!, without whom neither trance music nor the very concept of the remix would likely have been invented. Influential as they may be, however, Neu! records have, until now, remained something of an esoteric secret, reverently name-checked by musicians but available only to the most ardent of vinyl-hounds. Therefore Astralwerks' long-overdue reissues of three essential Neu! recordings -- marking not only their first release in the U.S. but their first-ever release in the CD format -- promises to put Neu! in their rightful position as overlooked but essential geniuses, the Teutonic equivalent of the Buzzcocks or the Velvet... More >>>