Being minimalist and motorik can be fun — hell, it’s almost a guaranteed good time when you just need a concentrated dose of intense monomania. But after facing the brink of breaking up, Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother’s effort to reconvene Neu! reshaped the Krautrock blueprint and gave them an even more important dimension: now they were unapologetically anthemic. Maybe if “Hero” or “After Eight” hit top 10 in the UK, the Sex Pistols would have been redundant — imagine if it was this version of yowling, joyful fury, serrated guitar melody, and don’t-stop-or-we’ll-die propulsion that took the world by storm instead. (As consolation prizes go, knocking David Bowie’s head for a loop and getting his ass to West Berlin is pretty good, at least.) And by keeping things on an even keel when it came to emotional impact — hypnotically beautiful, ambient-minded cuts like “Seeland,” “Leb’ wohl,” and “Isi” are every bit the thrill as the manic motorik cuts — Neu! ’75 gave us something even more rare than a punk revolution: an album that could be equally referred to as heavy and pretty.

One way to handle the tension between the two musicians was give them each their own LP side—and it worked. The Rother side, no surprise, is the gentle rof the two. “Isi”? Lowkey Music For Airports, the lightest and most lemony version of krautrock, like a station ID from, well, 1975. “Leb’ Wohl” is a death ambient power ballad? “Seeland” is like Robert Fripp doing slow Southern Rock. And that’s all Rother. On the second side, Klaus Dinger invents punk rock? Except he actually does, in “Hero” and “After Eight,” which are the same song viewed from two different angles. “Fuck the press! Fuck the company!” Dinger sings and let’s not undersell this point. Dinger’s snarling blaargh is as important as anything else the band did. “After Eight” has different lyrics and is more hairy. “E-Musik” is an amazing chug that presages some of the Stereolab tracks like “Simple Headphone Mind,” the collaboration with Nurse With Wound. The three albums Neu! made before imploding are impossible to oversell. They’re simply magical.