A RAPTUROUS, trundling 10-minute epic released on their 1972 debut album, Hallogallo set the blueprint for the career of Krautrock masters Neu. Take that rather impish word, a play on “Halligalli”, a German term for “wild partying”. It even looks playful.

Spilling the mercury-like slivers of Klaus Dinger's and Michael Rother's guitars over an unrelenting four-to-the-floor beat, it is and forever will be, simply glorious.

Glasgow-based band Outblinker have recorded a cover of the track, the proceeds of which will go to Marie Curie Cancer Care, an organisation which supported the band's friend Robbie Cooper before his death in April 2014. Cooper, the drummer for Dundee-based rock innovators Laeto, is a key influence on the instrumental band.

“Robbie was a big fan of Neu!” says Chris Cusack, guitarist and manager of Bar Bloc, the Glasgow eaterie and live music venue driven by a similarly independent spirit to that which powers the band.

“We wanted to do something for Marie Curie, which Robbie relied on for a long time. So we wondered what would be a suitable track and what would remind us of him and this is fun and optimistic rather than morose and over earnest.”

Hallogallo is released via Human Is Not Alone, a long-running project which aims to harness the energy and compassion of the DIY music community for the cancer charity.

It comes on the back of Outblinker's three-track EP The Remains Of Walter Peck, released in May.

Recalling the heady throb of Canadian improv pilots Holy Fuck and the intensity of France's Zombie Zombie, the EP is ostensibly named after the overbearing environmental official forever on the back of Peter Venkman and fellow Ghostbusters in the original 1984 movie. Still, it is memories of Cooper which dominate.

“Robbie is and isn't Walter Peck,” explains Cusack, talking from northern Italy before the band play another date on their extensive European tour. Admirably, he's speaking to The National at a decidedly unrock time on a Sunday morning.

“He was a very thoughtful guy and we'd speak about death a lot,” he continues. “Robbie was reconciled to his own. Obviously no one is happy about death, but he accepted his. So the EP is an attempt to get a balance between the sadness of his death but also his philosophical observations about it.”

The EP closer is Ernest Becker, a digitally-flecked eleven-minute collaboration with Benjamin John Power, the man who made difficult noise rock accessible to softies such as The National, firstly as one half of Fuck Buttons, and most recently with his solo project, the monolithic Blanck Mass.

Cusack notes how Becker won a 1974 Pulitzer for The Denial Of Death, a major work of modern philosophy and psychology which argues that civilisation is essentially a hugely ostentatious defence mechanism against mortality.

“The idea is that if you make something beautiful you can cheat death in some way,” he says. “It's a kind of reflection on how the things we do, from art to politics, are based on the naïve idea of us trying to make a footprint that outlives us.

“The track in the middle is called Farrokh Bulsara which was Freddie Mercury's name. That was inspired by another idea from conversations with Robbie, that these footprints people leave sometimes obscure the person who made them. People obsess over Elvis and Kurt Cobain, and you realise that the human being who had a mum and friends and went to school is left in the shadows.”

Hopefully it's an exaggeration to say that such ideas may have more purchase in Europe, at least in those places relatively untouched by the popular mood of ideas-above-your-station anti-intellectualism. Cusack notes how the DIY infrastructure is more resilient and supportive, at least for bands who've long put the mileage in.

“The way it seems to work in Europe is that people invested in the underground scene will go and see a band coming to the town because they trust the promoter. For bands it's to do with an understanding of conditions; you get provided with food and somewhere to stay. DIY tours can be really difficult without that, and you can end up paying more than you earn.

“We always put a note in our rider, to please include something that is distinct to the area. Last night we got this ridiculous five-course Italian meal and one time we played in La Rochelle and got oysters straight off the boat.”

As well as fuelling their bellies, the tour has allowed Outblinker to premier tracks from their forthcoming debut album, due before next year's midpoint.

With the support of Creative Scotland, it was recorded in an abandoned church on Rousay, a small Orkney island pocked with archaeological sites older than the Egyptian pyramids. Power manned the control banks. The material, Cusack explains, is a result of an intense schedule in which the four alternated 16-hour, round-the-clock shifts.

“We like Ben, so though it's great to hang out with him and it sounds like it could have been this big laugh … it really wasn't,” he says with a flat tone of acceptance.

“There's generally a lot going on in our music, so it made sense to get all the tracking done of the more ambient sounds, the stuff that really benefitted from being recorded in that big, beautiful room.”

With Cusack's spikier guitar taking up some of the slack since Jason Costello stepped back to focus on his family and demanding job in AI, the album is set to have an airier sound than previous Outblinker material.

For now its release, which Cusack says will be trailed by another single, is dependent on synchronising schedules and hoping the fates don't hurl too many curve balls at them.

Curve balls such as that when, just a few days into this current tour, their van broke down leaving them potentially stranded in Paris with touring schedule hanging in the balance. A few calls later, a replacement was sourced from their European network.

For now the immediate challenge is to keep Team Outblinker together. Costello's drummer brother Graham is in regular demand from Morroccan jazz bands who can offer better pay and better weather.

Meanwhile Italian keyboardist Luigi Pasquini is proving difficult to rouse after those five courses.

“I'm going to try again,” says Cusack, signing off. “He went a little feral last night.”

You can buy Outblinker's cover of Hallogallo at humanisnotalone.bandcamp.com. All proceeds will go to Marie Curie Cancer Care.

Outblinker play Edinburgh Leith Depot on December 8 with DTHPDL and Hostel Freaks, 7pm, £5.

and Glasgow's Old Hairdressers on December 10, time and price TBC www.facebook.com/outblinker