Super 45

In January 1973, following the unexpected success of their first record, krautrock group Neu!, formed by Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother, rushed over to the Windrose-Dumont-Time studio in Hamburg, Germany, to record a new album. With the recording for the A-side practically finished, their label, Brain Records, told them that they had used up their production budget and had to leave the studio. As they only had half an album to present, the musicians filled the B-side with versions of the recordings of the two singles ‘Neuschnee’ and ‘Super’ that they remixed at different speeds. Financial constraints induce a pragmatism that, here, resulted in the experiment described above. A lack of time led the musicians to produce other temporalities, recycling tracks that had already been recorded. The new ‘Super’, then, was both slowed down so that it played at 16 rpm and sped up to 78 rpm, creating two radically different pieces. Super 45 is presented in the form of a 7-inch (45 rpm), on which the two versions of the piece ‘Super’ (78 rpm and 16 rpm) have been re-recorded at their initial speed (45 rpm) – an experiment that makes it impossible to revert to the original piece.