Neu Electrikk

 

The story of Neu Electrikk is only one tributary amongst a great wave of untold tales that have gone unheralded amid the recent spate of post-punk recollections. Contrary to what Simon Reynolds may have you believe, the history of that era is still in the process of being written. Neu Electrikk were a group of young men in the mid to late 1970s to be galvanized by a combination of the first stirrings of punk and their own personal creative desires, who sought and found in each-other an energy and spirit that propelled their music forward in a breathless, unheeding rush. Their output during those tumultuous years was slim: just two 7” singles and compilation appearance in three years. Six tracks over seventeen minutes. Not a lot to go on, you might think, but they reveal so much - the influences fighting for space alongside flurries of invention and experimentation that drift onto a distinctive, hard won ground. The instruments are at odds; their vicious edges vie for supremacy, imbuing each track with a rather becoming tension, as befitting the austere times in which they were created. A voice steps forward unafraid of exoticism and seduction, a romantic trace within the prevailing chill of sexless gloom. This is band that existed and then was over, that triumphed amid collapse, that dreamed and made those dreams real, for however brief a moment. Neu Electrikk is a band that deserves to be remembered.

(Kevin McCaighy - Salt 2012)