Einstürzende Neubauten at Columbia Halle / Tuesday, 14.11.2017

Local legends Einstürzende Neubauten bring their “Greatest Hits” show to the Columbia Halle in Kreuzberg this November.

A concept of “conceptlessness” was created at that time from a spontaneous idea (many thought it was an April Fool’s joke when the Einstürzende Neubauten first stood on the stage at Berlin’s “Moon” on April 1, 1980; more than 35 years ago), from which the “brilliant dilettantes” developed their own strategy against social and musical architecture using metal pipes, feathers and machines. In keeping, Blixa Bargeld constructed metaphor-laden poetry, around which unique worlds of sound were built up from objects of the most varied origins. The band discovered sounds beyond the pain barrier, the beauty of dissonance and the aesthetics of the scrapyard.

[vimeo 189522072 w=700&h=481]

They are regarded as the most important engines in the development of new musical strategies. Hardly another German band has characterized the music landscape as lastingly as EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN. Their influence on the music world was and is as great as their timeless character.

How to continue? Not because one can or because one must, but because one does. The title track of Einstürzende Neubauten’s 2004 album said it right: Perpetuum Mobile. Once fully set in motion – by West Berliners Blixa Bargeld and NU Unruh and Alexander Hacke in the early 1980s – Einstürzende Neubauten have pressed on regardless. Indeed since percussionist Rudolf Moser and former Die Haut guitarist Jochen Arbeit joined 19 years ago, the Einstürzende Neubauten line-up has not only been their longest lasting; going on the evidence gathered here, it’s arguably their broadest ranging and most fruitful partnership, with Rudi and Jochen always gamely responding to the musical challenges posed by NU Unruh’s battery of invented instruments and devices.

Along with multi-instrumentalist Alex Hacke, who took over bass after the departure of Mark Chung (after their 1992 album Tabula Rasa) and FM Einheit (during the recording of 1996’s Ende Neu), they willingly switch between their chosen instruments and NU Unruh’s inventions, sounding the depths, tapping, scratching and hammering out beats, or drawing haunting tones from the seemingly most ungiving of source materials presented to them, invariably in the service of the song. And how does the song go? “We didn’t die”, sings Blixa, “we‘re just singing a different song”.
“The difference”, he goes on to clarify, “is in the song”