Come for the beat, stay for the ideas and economy. There is just so little waste in the Neu!verse. Speeding up and slowing down a track for kicks amuses me, though it apparently made people mad. Be aware there are alternate versions of two tracks here, all of them short. It all cracks me up. “Lila Engel” is Sonic Youth on EVOL. “Spitzenqualität” is a massive, gorgeous, echoing drum thrash with chaotic feedback cushioning it all. So genius. It became clear on the second album that each Neu! song is a viable idea for a different band, some of which still don’t yet exist. And all of which are Neu!

– Sasha Frere-Jones

Famously or infamously, a number of tracks on Neu! 2 are either sped up or slowed down versions of songs from an earlier single, due to the fact that Neu! itself had run out of money to do anything more. But the new songs that made up the first half were them at their motorik peak, the Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother duo moving from the propulsive dreamscape of “Für Immer” to the rampaging stomp of “Lila Engel” — the amount of bands who have tried to equal this since can’t be counted.

– Ned Raggett