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I like making things up. I like to think about possible alternative developments of certain events. And I also like it to be as plausible as possible. And also ridiculous a bit too much. Because it is such kind of activity that is actually worthless but nevertheless extremely gratifying. It is like what IWC folk call "fantasy booking" but even more pointless. It is a waste of time that can seriously mangle the evenness of invariance of the way you look at things. Whatever that could mean. Anyway...
Take a look at this image:
It is from legendary Photostatic magazine. I was surfing through it some time ago and stumbled upon this image. It puzzled me the wrong way. Because i instantly thought about forgery. I thought "If there ever will be a counterfeit Neu! album - this must be the cover - because things must be overcomplicated and needlessly tangent". Also - it lacks an exclamation mark which undermines the legitimacy so it will be perfect for some hapless bootleg edition. It also has nothing to do with an actual Neu! band. It's just one of the pieces in the issue. But this association had gone out of control and taken the image out of its original context down the overthinking avenue.
I thought about fake new NEU! for quite a while. It is a fun thing to think about. And here is what i have come up with.
***
For the start let's take the easy route of making fake new NEU! album. It is not as complicated and far less creative but still entertaining. I'm talking about recontextualized mixtape compilation.
Why? I'm from bizarro land and before spread of Internet piracy reigned with an iron fist. The most common type of "unofficial release" was custom-made compilation album - all these overtly underwhelming The Very Best Of Greatest Hits and so on. For a while it was one of the few ways of getting some stuff to listen. Sometimes choices made on such compilations were rather off-putting and curious to say the least. For example, i had a cd "Queen - The Very Best" which contained the songs that are not usually associated with the bands greatest hits. There were songs like "Millionaire Waltz" or "Bring Back that Leroy Brown" (good songs by the way) but no "Bohemian Rhapsody" or "Somebody to Love" (which is weird but respectable choice). It affected the perception of an artist in a variety of ways and often presented interesting alternative listening experience.
So - if you can't record fake new NEU! album - just make it out of the old ones. How about ambient NEU! Chillout experience? I'll take the tracks from the top of my head and construct the narrative around them on the fly. Because I'm Bil Sabab.
The result may look like this:
- - tender awkward bumbling of "Lieber Honig" -
- - takes a dive into the dark sonorous deep which may seem below but is actually beyond, leaves you stranded somewhere in the middle of nowhere on the track "Sonderangebot" -
- - after that you get the solid ground in "Im Glueck" but stumble in the dark, get up and walk towards the horizon all while the sun rises slowly but there is nothing out there -
- - so the walk goes on pointlessly with a purposeful grimace and affable mood in "Weissensee", it is kinda like "it doesn't matter if it doesn't make any sense and essentially goes nowhere - it's what you make of it" up until it stops and fades out -
- - so that the things can take an u-turn in "Lila Engel" in a form of unstoppable locomotive that moves towards you in a rather menacing manner but also very much like Monty Python' Sir Lancelot who runs and runs and runs but always too faraway up until the very point when you actually get hit -
- - which is hard enough to throw you in the direction out of space in "Spitzenqualitat" but you catch a fire in the atmosphere and eventually burn out completely and the only thing that left of you is some ashes falling down on the ground. THE END.
Now down with it.
Aside from recontextualized playlist - there are three ways to make fake new NEU! album. Two of them involve Todd Rundgren (because he's the man who can inspire just because).
In 1975 Rundgren released an album titled "Faithful". Its side A contained six cover versions of iconic rock songs - such solid gold foolproof classics as Beach Boys "Good Vibrations", Beatles "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Rain", Jimi Hendrix' "If Six was Nine", Yardbirds' "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" and a Bob Dylan song the title of which i don't remember because it is too long (sorry). While cover versions were nothing new or special even then - the whole approach was quite simple and refreshing: Rundgren didn't performed the songs his way. Instead of bringing something new to the table (which is logical) - he simply replicated the songs to the minor detail, as close as possible. As if it was a classical piece. His rendition of Good Vibrations is the best illustration of the method. It is almost a carbon copy of the original. It bears uncanny semblance to the original.
How about doing the same thing with Super, Super 16 and Super 78? The more i think about it - the more i think it should be left in my head because it is the only place where such things can be any good. Anyway. Move on to the second way to produce fake NEU! album to make use of that image.
In 1980 Rundgren's band Utopia had released an album titled "Deface the Music". It was rather affectionate tribute to the Fab Four aesthetics. No actual songs were covered this time. They just wrote their own songs using Beatles' songs as the foundation. The result sounds like The Beatles but it is not but very-very-very close. Which brings a different kind of uncanniness. The albums works with themes of imitation, appropriation, homages, mimicking and creating simulacras for sake of creating simucras. Songs of the album were designed to resemble Beatles songs. They took bits and pieces of various songs and constructed something of their own but not very much. It is kinda like Beatles just not Beatles but Beatles enough to fill a Beatles shaped hole somewhere in the realities fabric.
But it is more than just imitation. They added a bit of something here and there. If you are familiar with The Beatles ouvre and listen closely to "Deface the Music" you will find out more than one occassion of slight and rather tongue-in-cheek minor stylistic twists and turns. And that is the part of the fun of the album.
Think about mimicking Hallogallo or Fur Immer? Exactly. Let's move on.
In 2003 Madlib had released an album titled "Shades of Blue". It was a joint collaboration with legendary jazz label Blue Note Records. The idea was simple and brilliant - let Madlib scourge through the enormous Blue Note catalogue - take what he wants, chop and screw it in every possible way but gently and construct some new music out of old parts. Because that is how you shake things up and find new angles under which you can perceive things. It is probably the greatest remix album of all time (not titled Remanufacture, obviously). It does an edge play of sorts - keeps the vibe of the classic jazz records but brings the multilayered hip hop sound collage attitude. It is familiar but different. Its blend of jazz and hip hop is so seamless - it actually feels natural. But it is not.
It is a reflection which went far away deep inside the dark corber and then broke out of confinement of mind out of spite. It may be distorted and warped but there a gist that gushes out and makes a gashes on flanks circling around waiting to be caught and put back in place.
Now think about Neu! How about Hero but actually sounding like an act of heroism? Or Seeland but actually drowning in sounds and its numerous echoes? These are things certainly worth exploring.
***
There may be other of doing fake new NEU! albums but i'll stop here. Thinking about such things is refreshing once in a while.
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