(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
Die Haut (a quartet featuring singer Christoph Dreher and guitarist Remo Park) well represent the experimental milieu of Berlin in the 1980s.
The mini-album Schnelles Leben (March 1982 Monogram, 1982) was a break-through work. The pieces were mostly instrumental, not so much slapdash as overly cerebral, vaguely psychedelic in their results and vaguely inspired by the pseudo-blues cacophonies of Beefheart. After a funereal album with Nick Cave on vocals, Burnin' The Ice (December 1982 Illuminated, 1983 Hit Thing, 2004), the group disappeared for a few years.
Headless Body In A Topless Bar (June 1987 Whats So Funny About, 1988) arranged the songs more effectively around the atonal guitar and inaugurated the tradition of rotating charismatic figures from the avant-rock scene on vocals. For Head On (Triple X, 1992) they enlisted Kim Gordon, Debbie Harry, Lydia Lunch, Cristina Martinez, Anita Lane, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Alan Vega, Blixa Bargeld, and Kid Congo Powers. In reality, in the best numbers of these recordsthe visceral blues-rock of In The Heat Of The Night and the Suicide-like nightmare of Parts UnknownDie Haut come across as extras, or worse, as mere stage scenery.
Between the two albums with guest vocalists came Die Hard (August 1989 Whats So Funny About, 1989), a purely instrumental work that, lacking promotional scoop, went largely unnoticed but in fact continues the primitivist study of their first and most authentic album.
Their career ended with Sweat (Triple X, 1995), recorded live, and Spring (Rough Trade, 1997).
Over the years Die Haut nevertheless managed to forge a morbidly murky brand of hard rock, with the guitars of Jochen Arbeit and Rainer Lingk alternating heavy-metal riffs with obsessive Sonic Youth-style strumming, while Thomas Wydler keeps impossible rhythms, alternating explosive charges with industrial syncopations. Their best moments came in infernal instrumentals such as Anschlag and Another Ship In The Night.
Die Haut's drummer Thomas Wydler joined Nick Cave's Bad Seeds.
He also released Morphosa Harmonia (Hit Thing, 2004), a collaboration with Toby Dammit, as well as the solo albums
Soul Sheriff (Liaisons, 2007) and On The Mat And Off (Soulsheriff, 2012).
Remo Park formed
the Chasm that released
Lying In Ambush (What's So Funny About, 1990)
Aviator (IntenCity, 1995), Aviator Is Chasing Time (Strahlomat, 2002), Alien Healer (Golden Core, 2011) and Witchcraft Power (Sub Culture, 2014). He died in 2016.
