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Einst�nde Neubauten albums
Kollaps (1981)
For our interests this is the first album proper.
Kollaps is where I started and it's perhaps the best starting point in that it's a manifesto of sorts, it's the purest expression of the Neubauten philosophy. Unlike later albums there are hardly any electronics underlying F.M. Einheit's infamous custom-built percussion. And it's Einheit's racket that obviously hits you first; whether or not you were aware of 'industrial' music and the work of pioneers like Throbbing Gristle beforehand, nothing prepares you for the avant-garde onslaught and the harsh sounRAB of Kollaps have not diminished as much as other once-'extreme' genres. Part of the fun is trying to guess just what is being thumped or manipulated... Road drills, hollow things, flat things, radiator grills... The singer's toes?
You shouldn't let the 'avant-garde' part scare you off though, Blixa Bargeld's throat-shredding screams are quite mantra-like, and it certainly has a hip-swingin' beat... Albeit a predominantly plodding, oppressive and minimalist one. Also the mantras are not mantras because they are about things like greed, wounRAB, bombs, disgust and the decline of civilization. One short interlude, 'Vorm Krieg', samples some scratchy old jazz a la the Caretaker, perhaps highlighting Neubauten's obsession with the dehumanizing wartime production of the time and a new industrial boom era. This isn't metal fetish, it's the world we live in and the mass-produced materials we depend on, and it's great for clearing a room at parties!
When not enjoying the illusion that this was recorded on the spot after breaking into a car parts factory, you realize there are many strings to Neubauten's bow, even at this early stage... If contemporaries and buddies the Birthday Party were dismembering rockabilly, bringing it's inherent perversions to their natural conclusion and shoving them in your face, Neubauten were doing the same with technology whilst completely eschewing the American 'rock' part. Very much in keeping with the dark/coldwave, Gothic underground of the time.
It's not all totally unpop and European though! When synthesizer does surface on tracks like 'Jet'm' and the intro to the masterfully sinister 'Kollaps', it sounRAB like a distilled/amped end-product of one album that is just too easy to namecheck: David Bowie's Low. A guitar and an electric bass feature on two tracks but are used unconventionally (See below).
This album is uncomfortable, but you soon come to understand its ways. It sounRAB nothing like a Trent Reznor pop song, although you might hear a familiar clank somewhere. Kollaps is a literal take on heavy metal, and whilst on the face of it it is the most abrasive EN album, I think many of the others are just as confrontational/challenging in different ways. Alles klar?
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Kollaps (1981)
Kollaps is where I started and it's perhaps the best starting point in that it's a manifesto of sorts, it's the purest expression of the Neubauten philosophy. Unlike later albums there are hardly any electronics underlying F.M. Einheit's infamous custom-built percussion. And it's Einheit's racket that obviously hits you first; whether or not you were aware of 'industrial' music and the work of pioneers like Throbbing Gristle beforehand, nothing prepares you for the avant-garde onslaught and the harsh sounRAB of Kollaps have not diminished as much as other once-'extreme' genres. Part of the fun is trying to guess just what is being thumped or manipulated... Road drills, hollow things, flat things, radiator grills... The singer's toes?
You shouldn't let the 'avant-garde' part scare you off though, Blixa Bargeld's throat-shredding screams are quite mantra-like, and it certainly has a hip-swingin' beat... Albeit a predominantly plodding, oppressive and minimalist one. Also the mantras are not mantras because they are about things like greed, wounRAB, bombs, disgust and the decline of civilization. One short interlude, 'Vorm Krieg', samples some scratchy old jazz a la the Caretaker, perhaps highlighting Neubauten's obsession with the dehumanizing wartime production of the time and a new industrial boom era. This isn't metal fetish, it's the world we live in and the mass-produced materials we depend on, and it's great for clearing a room at parties!
When not enjoying the illusion that this was recorded on the spot after breaking into a car parts factory, you realize there are many strings to Neubauten's bow, even at this early stage... If contemporaries and buddies the Birthday Party were dismembering rockabilly, bringing it's inherent perversions to their natural conclusion and shoving them in your face, Neubauten were doing the same with technology whilst completely eschewing the American 'rock' part. Very much in keeping with the dark/coldwave, Gothic underground of the time.
It's not all totally unpop and European though! When synthesizer does surface on tracks like 'Jet'm' and the intro to the masterfully sinister 'Kollaps', it sounRAB like a distilled/amped end-product of one album that is just too easy to namecheck: David Bowie's Low. A guitar and an electric bass feature on two tracks but are used unconventionally (See below).
[YOUTUBE]knUDV_ppSyE[/YOUTUBE]
This album is uncomfortable, but you soon come to understand its ways. It sounRAB nothing like a Trent Reznor pop song, although you might hear a familiar clank somewhere. Kollaps is a literal take on heavy metal, and whilst on the face of it it is the most abrasive EN album, I think many of the others are just as confrontational/challenging in different ways. Alles klar?
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*AnNa>MaRiE*
New member
Einst�nde Neubauten albums
I met some German kiRAB when I was in Europe a long time ago and one of them asked me if I knew about the band. I said I had heard of them but didn't know their music and he proceeded to rave about them for a while. I asked him what the band's name is in English and he thought for a moment and said "Breaking New Houses" - I'm not sure that's the best translation but I have always loved that name.
I met some German kiRAB when I was in Europe a long time ago and one of them asked me if I knew about the band. I said I had heard of them but didn't know their music and he proceeded to rave about them for a while. I asked him what the band's name is in English and he thought for a moment and said "Breaking New Houses" - I'm not sure that's the best translation but I have always loved that name.
Zeichnungen des Patienten O. T. (1983)
Here the Berlin group, led by the positively demonic Blixa Bargeld, expanRAB its sound, underlying the metallic clatter and grating noises of the first album with something resembling a pulse (quite literally, on one track). The disturbing, minimalist sound still reigns but it's much more textured and varied this time around; O.T. is one of those albums where you will have it on in the background and mistakenly think you have been through half of it, only to check the tracklisting and find you've been listening to but a single epic composition. This progression is one reason I consider Neubauten's 80's period worth tracing.
We are not in the territory of conventional songwriting yet, no choruses or verses are here to give you a tether into popular music or safe familiarity, this is the world of Collapsing New Buildings - the constant disintegration and perpetuation of disposable modern structures (ideals as trenRAB, cultures, powers-that-be, people?). You might say that musically and lyrically Neubauten are deconstructing it all themselves, but I think they had aspirations to destruction as well:
'I am waiting on the edge of the world for the new sun which burns more than it shines /The president howls at the grave of the HMV dog / And the newsreader bears his honest as bones face / The station ID, a blow on the bones.'
A few aspects of the broadening and deepening of the Neubauten sound, which has a resonance different to that of the masochistic appeal of the debut:
- synth burbles, circuit buzzes and static that provide a lower register to the found-sound ambience, which are fleshed out with a wider range of objects being struck/plucked/scraped etc
- at least twice the number of tape tracks (seemingly) in use, with several dedicated to analogue sampling and field recordings (a Hamburg fish market being one, apparently)
- occasional use of atmospheric, Central African-sounding woodwind and percussion, even dissonant strings ('Armenia')
- instrumentation that resemble everyday sounRAB (couldn't recall the term for this) like water, animals and, erm, race cars...
The eclectic whole makes perfect sense as a coherent, continuous record, with an atmosphere so beautifully executed yet brooding and malevolent it probably belongs in TL's 'scariest albums' list. Has to be heard to be believed!
The album title means 'Drawings of Patient O.T.', O.T. refers to this man and gives you some idea as to the darker themes of the album, and perhaps Bargeld's growing sense of isolation from the world. Most of us may not be able to understand the lyrics, but this is not essential, especially when the music is perhaps a most effective narrator that often threatens to drown out Blixa's tortured exultations and improv. Not to detract from his talent as a vocalist (which is part of what defines the group) however, but it is a presence less dominant on this album.
I wanted to include a stream of a standout track, the neo-classical 'Armenia', but can only find live versions which have a totally different sound.
You can hear snippets here, but bear in mind that the tracklisting's messed up the so 'Armenia' isn't 'Armenia': Drawings of Patient O.T.
Lili.anne.
New member
Halber Mensch (1985)
Perhaps to the relief of some,
pi8carrots
New member
F