Neu! – ‘Hallogallo’ (HONOURABLE MENTION)

This is a stretch because I discovered Neu through Kraftwerk, and only then after I had already been “inspired” to write and was already a third of the way through my first novel. ‘Hallogallo’ is neither the musician as author, nor was it music that inspired me to write; it was rather the music that I find most inspiring to write to. Percussion, at least as much as lyrics, is my favourite part of music. It seems to break from the tyranny of having an immediate reaction to things, and even when it keeps time, it appears to wait for the formation and emergence of a general impression, or something even more abstract than that, maintaining and exercising the control of a subjectless force. ‘Hallogallo’ starts as if it is about to share the understanding of something you can grasp but can’t explain, before rejecting the effort as futile, and leaving it to some inferior form of consciousness to dwell on.

As with dub, the genre I most love writing to, Neu rarely employ vocals on their famous “motorik” tracks, and with very few exceptions (PJ Harvey’s White Chalk for my fourth novel, The Cure’s Pornography and Disintegration with the last one), lyrics, unless they can be filtered out or blended to sound like an instrument (which can happen with My Bloody Valentine or in some kinds of intense metal) are a distraction when I am trying to find words myself. Instrumentals bypass that and help me lift off, rather like running when you can’t feel the tiredness anymore, hitting “the zone”, and then hopefully achieving transcendence. Anything by King Tubby is useful when I am going back over my work and correcting, but for pure invention, so that all I have to do is not get in its way or block its path, simply allow the energy to flow through me and carry me with it, ‘Hallogallo’ does the job.