Neu!
Neu! 75

Neu! 75 is the third and final album of the group formed from the split of Organisation, from which Kraftwerk also emerged.
A sound that is more motor-like than robotic, and chillier rather than electronic: the music of Neu! in 1975 presents itself almost as a material and concrete counterpoint to the rhythmic anemias proposed by Kraftwerk in the same period with Autobahn.
The drums mark nearly the same upbeat tempo (gradually echoed, accelerated, or slowed) across all three albums, while a more or less disturbed downpour of extremely cold guitars and keyboards is tasked here with crafting elementary melodies: the most uncompromising reflection on pure rhythm of the entire '70s, the most credible death certificate of any psychedelic and romantic spirit that ever hovered over European rock before the Industrial catatonia.
Ideally already punk.

After the pop beginnings of the intoxicating keyboard of "Isi," the rest of the first side explores more meditative and "emptied" territories, not far from Eno's ambient (via Satie), while the second side is a continuous progression of distortions on increasingly paranoid rhythms.
The standout is the distorted and furious Hero (you decide the plural... but after all, it's no secret that Bowie even asked guitarist Thomas Dinger to play on Low).
Indeed, by listening to this record, alongside Kraftwerk, one can understand what sounds Bowie had assimilated before reworking them in his very personal homage to krautrock, which (also...) became the Berlin trilogy.

Saturated sound, reverberated and circular rhythm, pounding piano, and ethereal keyboards for an E-Music that gradually fades into the bleakest ambient and seems like a prelude to the explosive final paranoia of After Eight. The fury is almost punk rock, but already contaminated by electronics that subtly weave into the buzzing textures of the instruments... an unthinkable missing link between the more frantic Roxy Music and the future decadent outbursts of early Ultravox.
The most astonishing thing is that such a minimalist and repetitive sound as that of Neu! manages to foreshadow (or at least provide "inspirational" material for-) musical forms that are actually diversified among themselves, like the many productions of the following decade that will prove to have sunk their roots here.