Andreas Dorau – Was Ist N.E.U.

This collection of remixes of tracks from the "Neu" album was one of my most played albums of 1995, but not all of these remixes have aged well. Most of the first CD (the contributions from Perplexer, Mark 'Oh, Star Wash...) has the typical happy hardcore and hard trance sound you were likely to hear in Germany at that time, and the added vocals often seem strange, like there is no real connection between vocals and music. Disc 2 has a more experimental musical approach, which is more in sync with Dorau's own quirky post-new wave pop and decidedly naive lyrics. Highlights of the album include Octopussies turning the friendly "So Beeinflussbar" into dark, haunting techno; Service Express' mix of "Rund Um Die Uhr", which sounds like the ticking of a very complex and fragile clockwork; and Sweet Reinhard's reworking of "Die Sonne Scheint" with its brutally banging beat. And there are also two guilty pleasures on the album, both courtesy of Ilsa Gold (respectively their prole alter ego, Sons Of Ilsa): "Stoned Faces Don't Lie" gets turned into a highspeed breakbeat / happy hardcore tune with pitched-up Micky Mouse vocals; and the skin cancer awareness song "Die Sonne Scheint" ends up as a teenage boys' joke about sunburnt members called "Sonnenpenis".