Einsturzende Neubauten

Einstürzende Neubauten created, with commendable consistency, one of the most provocative and austere artistic programs of the 1980–89 decade.

As leading figures of Berlin’s rock avant-garde at the time, they spearheaded the global movement of “primitivist modernism,” exploring the boldest forms of sound using the humblest means. The charisma of the group was largely the charisma of Blixa Bargeld (Christian Emmerich), the singer and guitarist who also played with Nick Cave and for at least ten years was one of the most unsettling presences in the international underground. The credit for supporting his madness with their “noise” inventions goes to fellow members Mufti F.M. Einheit (Frank Strauss) and N.U. Unruh (Andrew Chudy).

Their albums revolve around obsessive themes, almost always culminating in parables of self-destruction, social oppression, marginalization, and inhibition, and almost never in the lyrical pathos that traditionally served as a release valve for theatrical rock (as with the Doors or the Velvet Underground, for example). They are hybrids of expressionist drama, dadaist pieces, and decadent poetry, belonging to music somewhat incidentally, driven by an intrinsic need to communicate in the dark, without movement or images. This also gives rise to the necessity of expanding the tonal spectrum of sound, resorting to unconventional instrumentation.

With Einstürzende Neubauten, German rock freed itself from the constraints of cosmic music and its surrogates, without abandoning the sense of monstrosity and terror that had defined it from the start. Bargeld became a theorist of aristocratic nihilism and barbaric primitivism, which permeate their sound. Direct descendants of the great expressionist dramatists, contaminated by the theatricality of happenings, pop art, and psychoanalysis of primal instincts, Bargeld and his companions staged performances that were grotesque celebrations of human degradation in the modern habitat.

Their art in fact belongs more to theater than to music. The provocation, the impact, and the extremism with which the ensemble assaults the audience are not easily transferable to record: how do you convey in sound the scene of a drummer (or supposed drummer) perforating the stage with a jackhammer?

Stars of the 1980 "Untergang Show," held in a former slaughterhouse that later became a hub for the new avant-garde, and of the 1982 Atonal Festival, Einstürzende Neubauten gained notoriety for the ferocious violence of their public performances—true pagan celebrations that combined subversive ferocity with dark nihilism, sometimes linked by the press to the terrorist acts of the Baader-Meinhof group. By building their instruments from industrial society’s waste (oil barrels, cement, air ducts, glass, radios, plastic, even meat), they established themselves as the bards of the post-industrial apocalypse.

Their early works—the 1980 single Fuer Den Untergang, whose Stahlversion is orchestrated for the steel of bridge suspensions, the double single Schwarz (Zick Zack), whose title track is a kind of expressionist lied accompanied only by dull noises, while Kalte Sterne retained a minimal guiding thread—already ranked among the most radical experiments in German music, rock and otherwise.

The early recordings were later compiled on Kalte Sterne (Mute, 2004), including a lengthy piece with Lydia Lunch, Thirsty Dog.

The album Kollaps (Zick Zack, 1981) more clearly defined their stylistic coordinates. Immersed in claustrophobic atmospheres, stripped of arrangements, marked by metallurgical cadences and psychotic vocalizations, counterpointed with jackhammers and saws, with a penchant for harshly metallic sounds and a unique skill for producing unpleasant noise, their compositions drifted into a limbo of “post-Cagean” irrationality. In Tanz Debil there is little more than highly emotional recitation and stormy industrial cadences. Steh Auf Berlin opens with a jackhammer and continues with a jumble of metallic percussion, distortions, and delirious declamations. Their philosophical anthem is Negativ Nein, a Nazi-toned recitation over a beat resembling water bubbles: little musicality, much emotion. Abstieg & Zerfall is equally sparse in arrangements. U-Haft Muzak continues the process of nullifying music, reducing the “song” to an amorphous beat and indecipherable screams. Hoeren Mit Schmerzen sounds like a group of bored children pounding on kitchen utensils. That insane Middle Eastern voodoo-billy of Kollaps stretches for eight minutes without variation, like a ritual of self-flagellation. By this time, bassist Marc Chung had joined the lineup. The fragments are no less evocative—for example, Sehnsucht, a one-minute crescendo of minimalist piano against martial guitar chords and desperate recitation. Centuries of harmony and counterpoint are renounced in these exercises of pure “staging” of the voice.

Zeichnungen des Patienten OT (Some Bizarre, 1983), which probably remains their masterpiece, is an expressionist collage reminiscent of the pastiches by Negativland and American noise artists, but it delves into a far more terminal spiritual desolation. Dull beats, disjointed cacophonies, demonic vocalizations (the most spastic in Falschgeld and Herrscher), alienating exoticisms (Styropor), persistent dissonances (Vanadium and Genaue Zeit, the most radical pieces), rhythmic storms (Abfackeln), and above all the relentless use of “household” instruments give the sound a macabre and unsettling sense of emptiness and terror.
Armenia, five minutes of horror within a hypnotic stasis embracing nightmare, psychedelic trip, and mantra, along with other endless kaleidoscopes of hallucinations, mark one of the deepest psychological depressions in rock and open the doors to a new generation of electronic shamans—far removed from “cosmic” sensationalism and “black” tribalism, yet even more chilling.

Meanwhile, Alexander Hacke played with Sprung Aus Den Wolken on Dub & Die (1981 - Klanggalerie, 2009).

After the triumph of Zeichnungen des Patienten OT, which had served as both a summation and clarification of the first phase of their career and had established guitarist Alexander Hacke and bassist Marc Chung as full-fledged members, Einstürzende Neubauten composed another of their expressionist dramas, Halber Mensch (Some Bizarre, 1985), this time tempered by a return to song form and, above all, hints of dance music.
Starting from a spasmodic tension in the a cappella madrigal of the title track, which echoes the obsessive counterpoints of avant-garde vocal music (Berio, Stockhausen, Penderecki), the album moves toward a more incandescent but less Freudian atmosphere in the industrial voodoobilly of Yu-gung and the danceable funk of ZNS. Instrumental scores return to monstrous levels of raw cacophony only in the Mephistophelian lied Der Tod ist ein Dandy.

Fuenf auf der nach oben offenen Richterskala (1987) is instead one of their darkest and most inscrutable psychodramas. The central pieces around which this colossal act of contrition revolves, Zerstorte Zelle and Stadte, are works more theatrical than musical—pieces recited in ecstatic delirium by Bargeld over a bed of random dissonances that toward the end swell into horrific apotheoses (desperate wails, a feverish electronic presence, staggering blows from metallic objects). It is the practice of the early, funeral Swans taken to the extreme of nervous tension.
In Keine Schonheit, it is spectacular how the group manages to create a sense of silence, of nerve-wracking anticipation, of events that must happen but never do (a bit Beckett-like), as dissonances and a choir of the damned coalesce through a very slow crescendo into an infernal blues. The harmony of Ich Bin's is practically only an interweaving of cadences: the extremely fast strumming of the guitar (almost Sufi-like), the line repeated mechanically by the choir, background press noises, the eruption of bells and triangles later in a frenzied crescendo; Bargeld’s singing functions to hold everything together, transforming this chaos of inorganic rhythms into a stream of consciousness.

The album nonetheless presents a more human face than its predecessors, thanks to an attempt to exploit the same “theatrical” devices within more cohesive structures. Kein Bestandteil, for example, stages its narrative with scattered chords, muted strikes, and chaotic sounds, yet manages to integrate rather than collapse its elements. Mo Di Mi Do Fr Sa So is worthy of a “Brechtian” cabaret lied, complete with string section, emphatic recitation, a hammering piano, violin, and a march that even recalls Stravinsky’s Histoire Du Soldat in an industrial guise.
Fuenf is ultimately one of their most austere and profound works, but also one of the least musical—a display of still lifes.

The attempt to normalize the sound toward a song-based structure continues on Haus der Luege (Some Bizarre, 1989), an album perhaps overly programmatic but rich in suggestive ideas. In particular, the three-movement “concrete” suite Fiat Lux moves from an opening imbued with religious spirit, through a crescendo of percussive intensity, to a silence of galactic voids, as if the band sought to absorb and amalgamate all the experiences of German rock from the past twenty years. The rest of the album is divided among melodic vignettes for cadaverous souls lost in labyrinths of evil: the relentless robotic Kraftwerk-like colossal Feurio, the tribal sabbath of Schwindel, and the decadent, vaguely Roxy Music-inspired ballad of the title track—all ideas, of course, distorted by their aesthetic of metallic noise.

After composing the music for the theater production Die Hamletmaschine (Rough Trade, 1991) and releasing the EPs Interim (Mute) and Malediction (Mute, 1993), the sixth album, Tabula Rasa (Mute, 1993), was released. With the sole exception of the suite Headcleaner, an anthem to palingenesis that harks back to the anarchic climates of their early work, the album is somewhat distracted and does not live up to their past. It is, however, their least chaotic work, the most organic, performed by a cohesive group rather than a collection of individualities.
While the Nine Inch Nails–style dance track Die Interimsliebenden restores the historical leadership of the industrial movement, and the song Blume (sung—or rather whispered—by Anita Lane, in an ultra-decadent atmosphere) can finally communicate the group’s aesthetic to a broader audience, tracks like Sie, a relentless catastrophic fantasia tracing Berlin’s history from creation to hell, Wueste (“desert”), orchestrated in an almost “ambient” manner, or the more cacophonous 12305, resemble mechanical monsters that no longer inspire fear. The quintet of Unruh, Chung, Hacke, Einheit, and Bargeld remains one of the most talented ensembles in the world.

In addition to continuing his work with Nick Cave’s band, Bargeld released Auftragsmusik (Ego, 1995), a collection of commissioned music.

Percussionist Einheit, in addition to performing with Diamanda Galas, is also active with the Stein ensemble. On his own, he composed the music for Prometheus and Lear (both collected on Ego, 1993), and for a free adaptation of Dante’s "Inferno", Radio Inferno (Ego, 1993), all following the principles of the most disorganized Dadaist collage; and with Caspar Brötzmann he recorded Merry Christmas (Our Choice, 1995), less random but no less experimental. Alexander Hacke has also composed film music, collected on Filmarbeiten (Our Choice, 1995).

Strategies Against Architecture I, II, III (2001) are three anthologies that summarize the band's career.

Blixa Bargeld has recorded the minimalistic Commissioned Music and the soundtrack Recycled.

Einsturzende Neubauten returned after three years with the soundtrack for a theatrical piece, Faustmusik (Mute, 1996), and Ende Neu (Mute, 1996), their least successful album yet. The latter was recorded without Einheit and Chung, and thus presents a new band. It also presents a new sound. Was Ist Ist turns their demonic voodoobilly into a well-structured dance song that could be made into a synth-pop hit. Stella Maris is a love serenade for guitar, bass, drums and string section that borrows the melody from a nursery rhyme. The frantic metal-dance of Installation No.1 is not very original. Ende Neu sounds like a paraphrase of Peter Gabriel's Games Without Frontiers.
The album basically succeeds only once. The obsessive, choral anti-machine exorcism of the 11-minute NNNAAAMMM slowly mutates into a clapping-driven dance, then, halfway, it opens a window on their cacophonous early years. The insistent Talking Heads-like bass line resumes and hypnotizes the track into a funky shuffle a` la Soft Cell.

Einheit, in the meantime, composed the dance score Sensation Death (Invisible, 1997).

The band (including new recruits Jochen Arbeit and Rudi Moser) resurrected with Silence Is Sexy (Rough Trade, 2000). The original edition contained a bonus 18-minute track, Pelikano, which is Bargeld reciting a poem over a noisy background.

Berlin Babylon (Our Choice, 2001) is the mediocre soundtrack for a documentary on Berlin.

Perpetuum Mobile (Mute, 2004) shows how the old terrorists have transformed into gentlemen philosophers, how the old visceral ferocity has turned into subtle grandeur. The funereal dirges (Ich Gehe Jetzt, Ein Leichtes Leises Sauseln) and the neurotic twitches (Ein Seltnener Vogel, Selbstportrait mit Kater) compose a somber, somewhat disillusioned, zombie-like meditation on the state of the world, rather than a frontal assaunt against the capitalist society. Nonetheless, the convoluted dynamics and uneven textures of the 14-minute inner journey Perpetuum Mobile point to a fundamental continuity between the various stages of the group's militancy. The apocalypse has been postponed, but the burial is already underway.

Alexander Hacke released the solo album Sanctuary (2005), featuring guests such as Andrew Chudy, Foetus, David Yow of Jesus Lizard, Vinnie Signorelli of Unsane, and Caspar Broetzmann.

The project titled "Musterhaus" consists of several self-released albums, mostly of very low artistic quality (bordering on the commercial rip-off): Anarchitektur (2005), Unglaublicher Laerm (2005), Grundstueck (2005), Solo Bassfeder (2005), Redux Orchestra vs Einstuerzende Neubauten (2006).

There is little to commend Einstuerzende Neubauten's Alles Wieder Offen (Potomak, 2007). A few tracks showcase their industrial-rhythmic creativity (Let's Do It A Dada, Die Wellen, Unvollstaendigkeit) but too many are relaxed, senile retreats into confessional songwriting.

The Jewels (2008) sounds like occasional music from retired intellectuals.

Alva Noto and Blixa Bargeld collaborated on the 18-minute EP Ret Marut Handshake (2009) and the full-length Mimikry (2010).

After a ten-year hiatus Einsturzende Neubauten returned with Lament (2014), a sort of rock opera about World War I (originally performed in Belgium to mark the centenary of that war). The chaotic noise of Kriegsmaschinerie is followed by the British anthem sung in German (Hymnen) which is followed by the industrial synth-pop of The Willy.Nicky Telegrams in 1980s style, which is followed by the trite recitation over hypnotic polyrhythms of the eleven-minute Der 1. Weltkrieg (Percussion Version), followed by several non-musical episodes. Lament- 1. Lament is simply a rising choral chant that segues into the artillery drone of Lament- 2. Abwartsspirale that segues into the mournful chamber adagio of Lament- 3. Pater Pecavi; and this tryptich is the most musical moment of the album. But the most moving moment is perhaps the ghostly ballad How Did I Die, despite a grandiose orchestral finale that ruins the whole atmosphere. The rest is simply embarrassing.

Alles In Allem (Potomak, 2020)