La Düsseldorf album cover
La Düsseldorf

La Düsseldorf

1976
Nova

Under his own recognizance, Klaus Dinger went off to make something like Neu! but much cheesier and more obviously rock. In concert with his brother Thomas (also a drummer) and Hans Lampe (yet another drummer), he takes everything cool about Neu! and jettisons it. The result? Kind of amazing and still pretty cool. The received wisdom is that Rother is an even-tempered genius (he is) and that Dinger was the lunatic obstructionist (he was)—but this doesn’t say anything about music. All on his own, Dinger is still a coherent, careful producer. Not enough gets said about how Dinger tuned and recorded drums, which are relentlessly soft in texture, even when being pounded to hell—and this is a huge aspect of why Neu! and la Dusseldorf worked so well. There are very few sharp edges on these four tracks of chugging and stomping and dumb singing, all of which I love. Without Neu!, this still would have been a major contribution.

Sasha Frere-Jones

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