Outsideleft: The Velvet Jackhammer of Einstürzende Neubauten

Einstürzende Neubauten
Alles Wieder Offen
(Potomak)

For many people like me, looking for their own weird way out, German industrial pioneers Einstürzende Neubauten were a godsend. Hardcore was too adrenaline-infused for me – it felt like these kids were just a gusher of platitudes. Now, as a gentrified variant of my former self, I get it now – in youth we are in a constant state of being completely spent, but then it just wore me out. Plus I wanted weird. I wanted sonic poetry ever since I dropped needle on a Harry Partch album from the library – those bizarre hobo stories over weird ancient Greek scales on instruments made out of retuned organs and glass bowls.

Somewhere along the way, I bought a compilation If You Can’t Please Yourself, You Can’t Please Your Soul that had washed up in the Record bar at the Mall, largely because of the inclusion of he salaciously named band Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel. The seeds of Coil, The The, Psychic TV, Marc Almond were all planted I the eager soil of my brain by that record, but the track that really set me on my heels was “Wardrobe” by the unpronounceable Einstürzende Neubauten. Banging away on bedsprings and growling in German, Neubauten sounded like the apocalyptic de-evolution of man trapped on tape by some future gas-masked Alan Lomax. Perfect sound for the fractured mind of youth, all those sparks and hammers and base human grunts tumbling out of the speakers like parts discarded by some alien rummaging through a wrecked car, looking for meat. Read more...