There’s a moment near the very end of Einstürzende Neubauten’s new album Rampen (apm: alien pop music) where the escalating sonic chaos fades away to leave behind what appears to be the deep pitch of a meditative bell that receives perhaps eight strikes before being swallowed up again. This part of “Gesundbrunnen” is a shadow that follows the form of a wondrous and strangely meditative long-playing album that never forgets, escapes or joins its four-decade pedigree: the loudest noise-rock from some of the music industry’s originals.
In the absence of a set of texts precisely translated from German, we must occasionally use English and the sounds Disasters so that our minds and hearts can interpret what the album really means. This understanding ends with another word in the title: extraterrestrial. And of course, there are moments that call to mind the denizens and dangers of space, especially the album’s nine-minute centerpiece “Planet Umbra.” A shadow is an area covered in shadow, but the planet described in the song does not host shadows at all. So more important here is the use of “alien” to suggest the strange and the unknown, a broad and corroded brush that Einstürzende Neubauten has long painted with.
We end up with many songs where we can imagine situations thanks to the band’s wisely chosen and modified sounds – bubbles and boat hatches closing (“Planet Umbra”), for example, or being led through a bubbling swamp at night (” Everything Will Be All Right “). “Es koennte sein” finds the band whispering a tale like a troupe of medieval bards, before their magic transports listeners into a cacophonous setting fit for blacksmiths and sorcery. “Before I Go” literally signals some a form of physical withdrawal preceding some kind of psychological exclusion (“I posted a cryptic message on the door”). And mixed with clear references to the fantastic underworld and ubermensch, Neubauten make us explore deep, dark concepts like longing and the unnecessary. Alien pop music, indeed.
On Disasters we also have to acknowledge how well Blixa Bargeld learned to lead Nick Cave while playing with The Bad Seeds, transforming his voice (and those of his EN colleagues) from just another instrument in the noise to an instrument for a role – playing and atmosphere. Bargeld is a compelling outsider vocalist, able to approach pastoral folk on “Es koennte sein” or lead a jangling chorus on “Tar & Feathers”. He can be a creepy recluse-turned-tour-guide straight out of a horror movie (“Everything’s gonna be okay”), or hiccup, snap, and scream to approach the aggressors and victims of a completely different horror movie (“Ist Ist” ). Bargeld and the band seem largely committed to quiet desperation, as opposed to the primal screams of years past, so this album follows suit.
But this is still an Einstürzende Neubauten album, and the presence of noise in the music-making is still as important and characteristic as the music itself. Bargeld’s strangled tongue and the band’s ever-churning percussion present to me the equivalent of Sonic Youth’s drums, each band breaking both convention and equipment to create new structures for sound. “The Pit of Language” feels full of echoes of detonated beats and distorted keyboard passages that we heard long ago in Nine Inch Nails The Fragile— the circle of industrial music will be continuous. And amid all the proper and engineered gear for this band and album, Alexander Hacke’s bass is the star of this show, a signature deep pulsation offering a counterpoint to strummed strings, corrugated metal snaps and glass rattles.
Einstürzende Neubauten definitely softened gradually in the 21st century. I wonder if technology is catching up with them, and without actually watching them perform, it’s getting harder and harder to tell in a song like “Ick wees nich (Noch nich)” what’s coming from a traditional instrument, what’s coming from improvised instruments and scraps, what’s currently processing and what is being corrected in post. I never sat down with the band Silence is sexy album, but my understanding of it suggests Rampen (apm: alien pop music) is something of an aural soulmate to the band’s 2000 album Silence is sexy, with a little more immediacy. I don’t know if this excites older Neubauten fans or fans of their older, more aggressive works. Still, there’s a lot to be said for music that’s not only listenable, but replayable, because if it’s replayable, it looks like it might be enjoyable. When it is pleasant, it becomes much closer to the essential.
Label: Descendant
Year: 2024
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