in conversation with Jim Krank
Confounding classification, Einstiirzende Neubauten stand unique among the Wester world's musicians. Defying all kinds of generic convention, they synthesize rock music, ambient sound, noise and performance art into an intoxicating contemporary Gotterdamerung. Announcing themselves to an unsuspecting West Berlin, they first performed under a full moon, next to the Berlin Wall, on 1 April, 1980. More recently they were West Germany's official cultural exhibit at the Vancouver Expo, and the Swedish Royal Ballet performed a work choreographed to their music. Collaborative projects have seen them working with artists, filmmakers, playwrights, choreographers and dancers. Initial notoriety sprang from the group's use of all manner of unconventional sounds and instruments: industrial tools, scrap metal- the percussion of one early song was a tape loop of band member Blixa Bargeld having his rib-cage beaten by a truculent Einheit. Their increasing acknowledgment is perhaps due to their commitment to a musical vocabulary which continues to expand and mutate into otherwise neglected areas. Einstiirzende Neubauten play music which is literally felt, not Frederick Nietzsche just heard. Their last album, Haus der Luge, is a sensual blitzkrieg, an apocalyptic siren howling and wailing in tune with the collapse of the Western world. Singer I songwriter Bargeld cuts loose with an impassioned banshee keening. Marc Chung's basslines ripple like the very earth around your feet heaving and quaking spasmodically- 5·5 on the open ended Richter scale. Hacke's guitar comes in for the 'axe' treatment, soaring pale blue heights-when he's not trying to blow his lungs through a drain pipe, that is. Then there's F.M. Einheit and N.U. Unruh, drumming demons from the primal pool in frenzied percussive fits. This record has everything from distorted reggae mutations to... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline