einstuerzende neubauten: classic or dud?

I've never heard these guys but they sound like something I like. How are they, compared to like, early Cabaret Voltaire or Throbbing Gristle?

more visceral, you need this stuff.

Apropos of sod-all, Dingsaller is bloody fantastic.

Please tell me you posted that to a rolling country thread, xhuxk.

Turns out this album hasn't reconciled me with them. Impressive but ultimately a bit boring.

okay this is pretty cool and then at 4:30 AW YEAH

stick around for blixa's covergirl moment

US leg of 30th anniversary tour cancelled

It is with great regret that Einstürzende Neubauten announce the cancellation of their planned thirtieth anniversary appearances in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Toronto and New York. While the U.S. Department of Homeland Security did issue approvals for the band’s visas, it was not done in time to secure the appointments at the overseas embassies and consulates that represent the necessary final step in the process.

The band members are tremendously disappointed by this turn of events and wish to thank all those fans who purchased tickets for these performances for their support. The band would have loved to do the tour and meet their overseas fans. Because this tour was a time-sensitive production, it will not be rescheduled. Ticket holders can obtain refunds from their point of purchase.

poop! i was really looking forward to seeing them. i'm especially miffed that it won't even be rescheduled.

may as well mention how great the ANBB album Blixa has done with Alva Noto is, its probably my favourite album at the moment

I've been listening to the recordings of the latest tour (they are doing the Grateful Dead recording every show and selling soundboard USBs at the end of the night) and they are so so so so tight and the setlists are so so so so amazing right now. The world's best live band. Whoever said Blixa needs to stop the inhale scream and wearing suits upthread 15 years ago is a fucking idiot.

jesus christ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxyWStLB0z0

<3 <3 <3 bookmarking for later

Ende Neu tour I saw in 1998 remains one of my top ten concert experiences

I saw them four times over the years: in 1989 in a tiny club in L.A., in 1990 at the (new) Ritz on 54th Street, in 1993 at Roseland, and in 2000 (I think) at Irving Plaza. Always fantastic, but the 1989 and 1993 shows were the life-changing ones.

And thanks to this thread's revival reminding me of their existence, I just bought a very rare (so rare it's not even listed on Discogs) Japanese 3CD set that contains Strategies Against Architecture Vols. I and II on eBay.

Saw them for the first time on the Ende Neu tour in London, it was incredible and have tried to see them every time they've rolled around since, that YouTube concert is fantastic but man, the illuminated perimeter of the stage is like some Trypohobic nightmare.

So despite having invented crowdfunding 20 years ago, they're now doing the next Supporter's Project on Patreon:

https://supporter.neubauten.org/

Yes, yes, grumble moan about Patreon being terrible if you're outside the US, but there are some wonderful perks. The usual webcasts and online shenanigans (TIL that German guitarists use Vah-Vah pedals, which is what I will always call them from now on!) - a proper album in April 2020, but also downloads and 7"s of spontaneous 'Jewels' and Dave projects.

And this is the kicker - they're digitising Blixa's enormous collection of 80s cassettes, rarities, rough mixes, live soundboard recordings from the early days, source material tapes, field recordings - and they will be making downloads of that material available to supporters. Some of the tracklists they've teased are just o_0 amazing.

Anyway, I've seen almost nothing about this floating about online - so if you know anyone who would be salivating over this sort of thing, please pass it on? Cheers!

Weedy scream, why I oughta... saw them only last year, and at 60, Blixavoice is still powerful enough to shake building foundations. So there.

http://www.drinkswithtony.com/ep-16-hackedepicciotto-and-blixa-bargeld/
THis was interesting Alex hacke and partner talking for an hour about various things including her 2 books. Followed by a 2007 interview with Blixa.

there is a breathing, pulsing quality to silence is sexy that is deeply satisfying

i saw them in 1987 at the olof palme festival near munich. they were drilling and making other not so funny sounds. they were better than the awful toten hosen. i was pissed out of my head at that festival. but i must say that i never became a fan. later on i bought "das haus der lüge" which was less abrasive and i kind of loved it. blixa bargeld is a strange guy. my fave lyrics by him:"nagel mein herz ans fensterkreuz", ie "nail my heart at the crossbar of the window". it says a lot about him.

I wouldn't call Blixa strange particularly. Perhaps the strangest thing about him is his career trajectory from emaciated, hollow-cheeked metal-basher into portly, three-piece-suit-wearing respected literary figure about whose writing conference papers are now given. He's a highly intelligent, cultured and charming man but he doesn't suffer fools gladly.

xxp I once saw Blixa do an amazing solo set based entirely around his voice and a loop pedal, I am really feeling that description

also, Neubauten on the Tabula Rasa tour was one of the best shows I have ever seen in my life

I spent an hour with him for Alternative Press in 2002 or so and he was like a cross between Bryan Ferry and Hannibal Lecter. One of the most fun interviews I've ever done.

i put them on one time and was about to go in the dressing room but overheard him shouting at the other members about (i presume) how badly they had played (i hadn't noticed anything amiss and had thought they had been wonderful). he is very scary when angry.

Blixa can, in a good mood, be very sweet and thoughtful? He recently sat down and patiently explained all of his favourite Kraftwerk albums to me, which was really quite above and beyond. I'm vaguely terrified of him, but he's actually lovely?

One of the things I've noticed about him is that he is just naturally an incredibly LOUD human being, even in his default mode, he seems like he's shouting. So if he's irritated, the irritation seems much more magnified by the volume. But him refusing to suffer fools is often when he is at his wittiest. (So long as you're not the target.) There's no putdown quite like a Blixa putdown.

I'm quite sad that the current supporter's project isn't getting any attention at all. They're still doing some really wonderful and pleasing work - funnily enough, the almost-throwaway "Dave" experiments have been resulting in some of the most enjoyable and playful, freeform, almost surreal tracks.

That is very interest8nbg.

That is very interesting. Perhaps when I encoutered him then he wasn't actually angry at all.

No, I mean, he also can be scarily, incandescently angry - and the volume combined with the rapier-sharp wit makes that terrifying.

But he's also kind of weirdly (almost childishly) excitable. Which is unexpected in someone with a reputation for being so icy uber-cool. So I do think that sometimes "Blixa shouting loudly in German" is read as him being angry, when he's just begeistert and laut?

But he really, really does not suffer fools gladly. (Which is why I'm so terrified of him - I'm 110% fool.)

I don't know when I became such a Captain Save-A-Prussian. I just love him, OK?

Go on then, I'm curious – how come you sat down with Blixa for a chat?

I'm a massive EN fan but I don't care much for this supporter thing, I just want to buy the finished record. The earlier supporter projects weren't very interesting to me either as they seemed to include the possibility of creative input to the album from supporters, whereas I thought they should have been making the record free from that kind of influence. Interestingly, they seem to have dropped that aspect from the current supporter project.

It's interesting that you didn't consider, that perhaps the very thing you're disparaging as totally "not your thing" in the second paragraph, is the exact answer to your question in the first.

So what are his favorites Kraftwerk albums?

Well, I assumed that your conversation with him was face-to-face, and face-to-face meetings are not part of the supporter rewards, but maybe it was via video.

xp

He said he was a huge fan, growing up, loved them from the first 2 albums all the way through to Die Mensch Maschine (after that he said they lost him). But the two releases he particularly singled out were Ralf und Florian and the Kometenmelodie single (with a cute story about combing all of West Berlin to find it! Sign of a true Kraftwerk nerd, tracking down that one.)

Love taht Kometnenmelodie traclk. Wish I hadn't lost the Exceller 8 lp which was my introduction to the early years, probably lost it at the same time as the Van Der Graaf generator cover double lp of the first 2 lps which I picked up several years later come to think of things.
Exceller 8 was an amalagam of the first 3 or 4 lps . I think a couple of things were edited.

Think you can hear some echoes of that early stuff in early EN longside Pink Floyd. Kollaps has a backcover that seems to be a tribute to the back sleeve of Ummagumma

ha, I never thought about that cover connection!

Hahaha, I had not noticed that, but yeah. Dude clearly had a Floyd stage. For a Punque Rocke Icon (tm) he has such dirty dronerock boy taste in music. He loves him some NEU! too.

Kollaps has a backcover that seems to be a tribute to the back sleeve of Ummagumma

That was the first thing I thought when I saw it!

it's funny because the one time I met Blixa he was just sitting placidly noodling at a piano, and I had come into the rehearsal studio to unlock a cabinet for another member of the ensemble (not neubauten, an experimental classical thing)

also since this thread is active -- here's a link to a new(ish) documentary featuring neubauten

https://www.desolationcenter.com/

So apparently during their Musterhaus phase, they attempted to entirely cover Ummagumma from memory, or play along with the record, or something stupid and ridiculous like that?

It's been really really edifying, watching them work, because you can see that they are experimental, in the sense of trying out all kinda of wild and wacky shit just to see what happens. And some of it really, really works and sounds amazing (they had a day where all of them decided to play metal springs of various shapes and sizes, which sounded fantasic, like really wild dub) and some of it just patently doesn't work - but you can't tell in advance which is going to be which?

They manage to keep a sense of playfulness and spontaneity - sometimes they're like goofy, excitable children in the studio as often as they're Serious Prussian Musicians Playing With Precision - where so many bands of their generation or type just became so po-faced and tedious and wank. Which, unfortunately, doesn't always come across on the Official Finished Records, but is much more apparent in the webcasts, the Daves (which turned up in compilation on The Jewels - the re-release of which really rekindled my interest in the band) and the supporter-only stuff. Which is why it's worth it for me, being a supporter, because the random stuff they produce when they're not working to produce The Official Album is a lot more fun and a lot more interesting.

Blixa has been playing guitar again, which is... a treat.

He was really cute about it, too. They said he bought a guitar - which surprised him as much as it surprised us - and we were all very disbelieving. We kept being told about this guitar Blixa was buying, and I kept going "I don't believe you, pics or it didn't happen" and then 24 hours later this picture mysteriously appeared:

https://66.media.tumblr.com/e2b635f2f189da499f08fd8632a75963/tumblr_ps6fi6l9Ly1rjw8sqo1_1280.pnj

He is such an adorkable cutie, LOOKIT MY KOOL SPACEROCK GUITAR then he went in the studio and ran it through 8000 wibbling delay pedals and I was in heaven.

Did he get anywhere with learning pedal steel guitar? I heard he was trying to learn back around the mid 00ies.

I really want a CD of The Jewels, thanks for the reminder

So apparently during their Musterhaus phase, they attempted to entirely cover Ummagumma from memory, or play along with the record, or something stupid and ridiculous like that?

So someone somewhere must have a recording of them doing "Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict"?

JUst seen this for the first time, is it well known?
https://neubautenshrimpscampi.tumblr.com/image/115381123404
are EN well know bronies?

https://neubautenshrimpscampi.tumblr.com/image/115381123404
is what i was trying to post

New album is called Alles in Allem. It's out, I think in May?

I'm still mad that they left the two best songs off the album (the lollopping Mother Sky-like spacerock epic, and the Bubblewrap Song) but the album that it is going to be is still going to be incredibly good. Some rather unexpected, but incredibly beautiful textures coming from the Prussians. (I think this might be their ~Psychedelic Album~?) And very personal, very Berlinny lyrics.

Also harp. The harp was quite divisive among the fans, but it sounds absolutely freaking amazing. A duet between carefully tuned ballistic shell casings, and harp.

Very excited now, for reasons that will soon be clear!

I draw myself anew
non-binary I: forever new

So, absolutely freaking CLASSIC, obviously.

Seeing them in June. It's good that they have a new album to tour, they need to change up the live show a bit. The last couple of times I've seen them it's been more or less the Greatest Hits comp played live, which was great of course but did leave me wanting to hear something new.