Release
During the 1990s the first three Neu! albums were available on CD on Germanofon Records, a dubious label allegedly based in Luxembourg who specialized in unauthorized and illegal reissues (bootlegs) of otherwise unavailable Krautrock albums. Germanofon managed to get a number of their releases, including the three Neu! albums, into mainstream distribution. According to Michael Rother's account Dinger released Neu! 4 "in an act of despair, so he says" in late 1995 as a response to the bootlegs, which Dinger rails against in the liner notes. Neu! 4 was issued by the Japanese label Captain Trip Records, without Rother's input, knowledge, or consent. He only learned what had happened in a telegram congratulating him on the release of the album. Rother, writing in March 2007, described this experience as "a rather painful disaster between Klaus Dinger and myself".
The release of Neu! 4 exacerbated the disagreements between Rother and Dinger, which prevented an official CD release of the three classic Neu! albums until 2001. The 2000 agreement between Rother and Dinger which led to the CD releases on Astralwerks in the U.S. and Grönland Records in the UK called for Neu! 4 to be recalled and it has been out of print since then.
Despite Michael Rother's continued objection to Klaus Dinger's original decision to release Neu! 4 and his oft stated opinion "that isn't a legal/real Neu! album", Rother had no objection to fans buying the CD second hand and would always leave open the possibility that Neu! 4 could be reissued legally with his consent in the future. Rother and Dinger did attempt to negotiate such a release after the official reissue of the first three albums. In March, 2007 Rother termed the failure to reach such an agreement "unfortunate". With Dinger's death in 2008, such an agreement seemed unlikely.
Read more about this topic: Neu! 4
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