Through his work with
Neu! and
La Dusseldorf, along with many of his own solo albums,
Klaus Dinger helped pioneer the driving, repetitive, and psychedelically touched sounds that would come to be known as Krautrock.
Dinger was working on what would become his final album with a group of Japanese musicians and artists including his wife Miki Yui,
Kazuyuki Onouchi, and Satoshi Okamoto, when he passed away in 2010. Though the recording process had begun in 2000 and stretched out until the time of his demise, his surviving friends and collaborators finished the recordings after his death, entitling it Klaus Dinger + Japandorf. The album's primarily instrumental leaning has much in common with the Motorik rhythms and open-to-possibilities exploration of his earliest work in
Neu!, with tracks like "Sketch No. 1" and "Udon" following the droning but exhilarating blueprint of the early days of Germany's experimental underground scene. ~ Fred Thomas