Einstürzende Neubauten - Live 2022.06.06 Konzerthaus, Berlin, Germany

Yes, I just saw Neubauten five days before at the Columbiahalle. As with that show, this one was also rescheduled from 2020, although this one was supposed to happen first, at the start of the tour in April. The Columbiahalle show was originally scheduled much later at the end of the tour in September. This show was initially rescheduled for the same timeframe in September, then again to September 2021, and then once more to this date. Thankfully it finally happened! You can read my hesitations around live music during a pandemic in my last review (or anything I’ve written in the last two years), but in any case, I went. I know it’s absurd to see the same band twice in the span of less than a week even during non-apocalyptic times, but I was presented with a bit of a conundrum. The nature of live music these days is accompanied by a constant worry that any show might be canceled at any minute. This literally just happened to Herbert Grönemeyer’s big tour; all three nights in Berlin were canceled because he has covid. So while I was actually more interested in seeing this show (I mean, it’s at the Konzerthaus! It’s a beautiful classical music venue!), I had to hedge my bets. So I went to both. I had tickets to both since 2019 anyway.

The show started off just like the last one. I was worried I was going to be bored by a repeat of the same experience. However, despite that the setlist was the same until the first encore, it gradually became apparent that the band were performing at a higher caliber. I complained quite a bit about the band being loose at the last show and even at the 2017 show I saw, but this time, they were tight on a level I hadn’t seen before. Even “Taschen” was better! The parts fit together just right and the songs flowed with carefully crafted grace. Even the slower songs jelled better; they were just smoother. I still think the samples were too much, and some songs were still a bit too tepid, but this time I could at least follow the intended idea and mood. They felt like they finally had some life in them. I was particularly impressed by “Alles in Allem”, which worked better than ever, even better than the album version. “Tempelhof” also excelled in this environment, and its position at the end of the first encore, but not the entire concert, was much better.

The best songs from Alles in Allem and all the classics were just as good as ever. On top of that came a surprise: when introducing the band before “Ten Grand Goldie”, Blixa Bargeld brought out his daughter Millicent to come out and play the trombone part from the record, which she also played on! Amusingly, she wore a blue suit much like Jochen Arbeit’s standard attire. Another surprise was “La Guillotine de Magritte”, a non-album single from 2020, in place of “Sabrina”. I love “Sabrina” but appreciated the variation. The Rampe improvisation was also quite a bit different than the one from the Columbiahalle show. The key lyrics in this one appeared to be “before I go” and “dissolved”. I could see Blixa’s lyric monitor (but not well enough to actually read it), and there were lyrics for it, but the display kept jumping around, so he was almost certainly freestyling. Rudolf Moser seemed to still be figuring out what to do with the song, as he moved around the stage to use just about every set of percussion he could get his hands on. Meanwhile, Alexander Hacke used some really weird effects on his bass to make a bizarrely fuzzed-out squeal. I liked it. [Update 2024.05.11: This song formed the basis of "Before I Go" on Rampen (apm: alien pop music), released in 2024.]

The end of the second encore was “Let’s Do It a Dada”, which was a pure delight with several members of the band using all sorts of weird toy instruments. N.U. Unruh donned a white garment and an absurdly tall hat in an apparent homage to Hugo Ball’s Magical Bishop costume and read Dada poetry, apparently written by Blixa, but obviously inspired by Ball. They’d also played the song successfully at the 2017 show, but this time it really struck me what a great showcase for their strengths the song is! It has some similarities to “Zivilisatorisches Missgeschick”, but whereas that song feels random and abrasive, “Dada” is light-hearted, joyful, and full of energy. I also realized that the most driving instrument is simply Hacke’s fuzz bass. He wielded it with so much power and confidence. I want to play bass like that! (For more context on the lyrics and inspiration for the song, I recommend this mostly-English article and this German article.) And after that, the band came back for yet another encore! They just gave us one more song, “Redukt”, which was a great closing pick.

In addition to the tighter performance and slightly better setlist structure, the venue itself made a big difference. The Columbiahalle is a typical large rock venue: no decoration, no comfort, no style, just pure function. The balcony is nice and the sound is fine, but it’s not exactly a pleasant place. The Konzerthaus, on the other hand, is beautiful, ornate, and designed with some level of comfort in mind. And it sounded way better, too! I was particularly surprised since I was sitting behind the band at an angle, and yet I still was treated to superb sound quality. I heard some gripes from other people near me about the view, but I thought it was great. I had an excellent view of the percussion, which is my favorite part of the Neubauten live experience anyway. I could hear every subtle note and beat, including several things I didn’t catch or didn’t understand at previous performances, mostly from little extra touches that Unruh would add on top of the main beat typically supplied by Moser. It was a pleasure to get such a close view of all the weird bits of metal, the assorted springs, the various machinery, and the amusing household found-art objects that the band uses to create the underpinning of their songs. I mean, Moser’s jet turbine percussion solo in “Nagorny Karabach” is just so good!

[“Ten Grand Goldie” with Millicent Bargeld on trombone. Also note the large curved spring played by Hacke.]

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I bought the USB stick recording of the show afterwards. It’s still just mp3, but at least this time it’s 320kbps! (The one I got in 2017 was 256.) It sounds great; the only flaws I’ve noticed so far are some distortion in the heaviest parts of “Sonnenbarke” and Blixa’s screeched vocals in “Zivilisatorisches Missgeschick”. It still can’t beat the combined audio-visual experience, and the lack of editing certainly sets it apart from a typical commercial live recording, but considering my comfort with bootleg recordings, I think it stands fairly strong. I’m happy to have it.

Here’s the setlist:
01. Wedding
02. Möbliertes Lied
03. Nagorny Karabach
04. Die Befindlichkeit des Landes
05. Sonnenbarke
06. Seven Screws
07. Grazer Damm
08. Alles in Allem
09. Zivilisatorisches Missgeschick
10. How Did I Die?
11. Am Landwehrkanal
12. Ten Grand Goldie
13. Susej

First Encore:
14. Taschen
15. La Guillotine de Magritte
16. Tempelhof

Second Encore:
17. Rampe: Before I Go
18. Let’s Do It a Dada

Third Encore:
19. Redukt

Scores:
The concert: A-
The recording: B+

Einstürzende Neubauten - Live 2022.06.01 Columbiahalle, Berlin, Germany

Einstürzende Neubauten released Alles in Allem in May 2020. I briefly reviewed the album as part of my 2020 in Review post, and honestly, I wasn’t that impressed. About half the tracks are good, but the other half just leave me bored. I was disappointed. Primary Neubauten albums are usually superb. Obviously, they weren’t able to tour at the time, but I’d already bought tickets for two shows of their tour long before I’d heard anything but the lead single. This show was originally scheduled in September 2020, and it was initially rescheduled for September 2021, but ultimately postponed again. It finally happened this time.

This was my first large-scale indoor concert since early 2020. It was a strange experience. With the exception of a small minority of people wearing masks (including percussionist N.U. Unruh), you could hardly tell that there was a pandemic still going on, or that for significant parts of the last two-plus years, concerts like this weren’t happening (in Germany, at least). Large-scale indoor concerts have been generally allowed here for about a year now, but plenty of bands didn’t feel comfortable touring, or they couldn’t finance the tour because ticket sales were low. I’m clearly not the only one who’s been hesitant. I still wish case numbers were lower, I wish more people were vaccinated, I wish public sentiment mirrored health organization advice, and I wish we didn’t live in an ableist capitalist society that shamelessly throws health workers and the vulnerable under the bus in the name of profit. And yet, I too long for some sense of normalcy, even though my world has been substantially shaken up in the last two years, and not just by the pandemic. I’m finally ready to take the occasional risk, test regularly before and after, and try to enjoy one of my favorite activities in life: live music. For better or worse, I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t resist. The show was sold out and the venue was quite full.

I saw Neubauten in 2017 in the same venue. It wasn’t a perfect show, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. This show ended up being quite similar, but much more focused on the “new” album. In fact, they played the whole thing, albeit not in the same order. Interspersed were some of their greatest hits, with a particular bias for Silence Is Sexy (2000). Much to my frustration, though, not a single one of the older songs they played hadn’t also been played at that 2017 show. For a band with such an extensive discography over a 42-year period, that felt a little strange. That said, every single one of those older songs is excellent, so it’s hard to complain too much.

At any rate, the show started really strong. The first two songs, both from Alles in Allem, were meditative and trance-like, with good grooves and clever lyrics. This is a relatively new vibe for Neubauten, and they nailed it with these ones. They then played some of the classics, including one of my personal favorites, “Die Befindlichkeit des Landes”. Bargeld’s musings on the commercial-capitalist takeover of Potsdamer Platz feel more relevant than ever! He warned us that “Sonnenbarke” was written well before the pandemic but includes the word “Corona”, and I was surprised that when he actually sung it, some people in the audience cheered! I’m still not really sure how to interpret that. Were they just excited to have caught it and wanted to prove they were paying attention?

Then came “Seven Screws”, one of my favorites from the new album. It felt a bit sparse and thin, but again, the groove held it together just right. I love that Bargeld managed to throw in a reference to “Für immer” by Neu! and make a very relatable play on words about his gender identity: “non-binary: I forever (k)new”! I might be reading into it a bit much, but that’s the sort of song that feels written for someone like me.

But then from “Grazer Damm” onwards, things got really slow and tame. That song and “Alles in Allem” just kind of dragged on without any of the pulsing energy of the previous songs. “Zivilisatorisches Missgeschick” came with an amusing explanation from Bargeld that the song consisted of fourteen parts within four minutes, each with amusing names, but the song itself mostly just felt like random bits of noise and scattered lyrics. “Am Landwehrkanal” was a notable interruption, though. It’s also one of the strongest tracks on the record and serves as a lovely requiem for Rosa Luxemburg. I love the simple admiration of the line, “Wir hatten 1000 Ideen, und alle war’n gut” (“We had thousands of ideas, and all of them were good”). The percussion was particularly good, and it was a rare case of guitarist Jochen Arbeit first adding some percussion and then even playing a melodica part!

The first encore opened with “Taschen”, another song from Alles in Allem, which seemed almost intentionally offbeat. Unruh and Arbeit both struck large plastic bags for the main beat, which is almost impossible to keep in time, and indeed even the recording on the album is loose. I like the lyric, and the way it specifically plays off similar lyrics and ideas from “Grundstück” from Perpetuum Mobile (2004), but musically it didn’t quite pull together. But then “Sabrina” and “Redukt” were excellent throwbacks!

They could’ve ended then on a high note, but I wasn’t upset that they came back for more. First, they tried a out a Rampe, their name for an experimental improvisation. I didn’t recognize anything from the piece, but it sounded like a key phrase was “write to me” (or “right to me”?). I was disappointed at the lack of a Rampe at the last show I’d seen, and I was worried that that was a thing of the past, so this was a pleasant surprise. However, ending the show with “Tempelhof” was a bit disappointing. It was of course appropriate in that the former airport and current park was literally across the street from the venue, but the song itself was just too sparse and diffuse. There was no energy to it.

I came away happy to have seen the show, but overwhelmed by the crowd and uncertain if I really got what I’d come for. The new-ish songs were a really mixed bag, much like the corresponding album. A few are awesome, but several just aren’t. Many of the songs heavily rely on string parts, but most were sampled. A few were done on keyboard, which feels more like a reasonable compromise, but the whole set felt a little too reliant on samples. Considering how much pride the band has in their unusual instrumentation, it just seems like a jarring choice. The band and their crew spent so much time arranging various unusual percussion instruments, which is a joy to behold. Yet much of the structure and rhythm is nonetheless provided by samples! And despite those backing tracks, the band again seemed a bit too loose. Unruh in particular seemed to have trouble keeping the beat, but it’s probably not fair to lay blame solely upon him.

Neubauten are a rare and wondrous beast, but they aren’t quite hitting their target. I’m glad I went, but I still wished for more. I didn’t bother getting the USB stick recording of the show afterwards.

Here’s the setlist:
01. Wedding
02. Möbliertes Lied
03. Nagorny Karabach
04. Die Befindlichkeit des Landes
05. Sonnenbarke
06. Seven Screws
07. Grazer Damm
08. Alles in Allem
09. Zivilisatorisches Missgeschick
10. How Did I Die?
11. Am Landwehrkanal
12. Ten Grand Goldie
13. Susej

First Encore:
14. Taschen
15. Sabrina
16. Redukt

Second Encore:
17. Rampe
18. Tempelhof

Scores:
The concert: B-
Alles in Allem: C+

Einstürzende Neubauten - Live 2017.11.14 Columbiahalle, Berlin, Germany

I bought a ticket for this show a month before I moved to Berlin because I knew this was something I did not want to miss. The opportunity to see such a quintessential Berlin band in their hometown was irresistible.

Artist: Einstürzende Neubauten

Venue: Columbiahalle

Location: Berlin, Germany

Date: 14 November 2017

Setlist:
01. The Garden

02. Haus der Lüge

03. Nagorny Karabach

04. Dead Friends (Around the Corner)

05. Unvollständigkeit

06. Youme & Meyou

07. Die Befindlichkeit des Landes

08. Sonnenbarke

09. Halber Mensch [partial] → Von wegen

10. Sabrina

11. Susej

12. How Did I Die?

First Encore:

13. Silence Is Sexy

14. Let's Do It a Dada

15. Total Eclipse of the Sun

Second Encore:

16. Salamandrina

17. Redukt

The band came to the stage without percussionist Rudolf Moser or guitarist Jochen Arbeit for the performance of "The Garden". Although I like the song, I found the live performance to be a bit dull. I was concerned that the show might be a dud, but the rest of the band came out for an explosive "Haus der Lüge" and convinced me that they still had something in them. Most of the rest of the show was somewhere in between those two extremes, combining conventional beauty and restraint with chaotic energy and noise.

Seeing the band live, it becomes apparent that bassist Alexander Hacke is the underpinning of the band. His bass dominated the mix and was the foundation upon which most songs were built. The self-made percussion was also critical (and a delight to behold in person), but I was surprised by how many songs had backing tracks presumably controlled by touring keyboardist Felix Gebhard. Blixa Bargeld even commented while lighting an "herbal cigarette" for the introduction of "Silence Is Sexy" that "man darf nicht alles glauben, was man hört" ("one shouldn't believe everything that one hears"). There's an irony to me that a band so focused on customized instrumentation and experimentation would still use synthesized accompaniment. Despite such assistance, the band was occasionally a bit loose. I don't expect perfection, but the lack of precision was disappointing.

I was also a bit surprised that Arbeit's guitar was pushed back in the mix. The guitar was rarely the centerpiece; it was rather a textural element, often played with an ebow to sound entirely unlike a guitar. It was amusing as well that unlike most rock bands, the guitarist and bassist never swapped out their instruments, but the two percussionists were constantly changing and adjusting their collection of tools. The band's large array of pipes, machinery, metal sheets, bars, springs, gears, and contraptions remains their greatest novelty and contributes substantially to the visual experience (to say nothing of the auditory experience!).

The other special trait of the band was Blixa's trademark bizarre screeching ability. While it is less terrifically frightening and otherworldly than it once was, it has become expertly trained with time. Otherwise, his voice was still strong, although not always perfect in time or pitch. All of the regular bandmates also contributed backing vocals, which was another nice touch.

The setlist relied heavily on Silence Is Sexy (2000) and Alles wieder offen (2007), closely matching the material on their new Greatest Hits collection. That set oddly features only one song from Haus der Lüge (1989) and nothing whatsoever from the eight years and four albums preceding that. (It also only features "The Garden" from Ende Neu (1996) and "How Did I Die?" from their latest album, Lament (2014).) The setlist was similarly biased, although they did a short version of "Halber Mensch" as an introduction to "Von wegen", which itself concluded (as in the studio recording) with a short quotation from "Sehnsucht" off their first studio album, Kollaps (1981).

"Unvollständigkeit" was perhaps the only song they played that didn't entirely work; it felt a bit lethargic and restrained. "Let's Do It a Dada", on the other hand, was a total success, despite the recorded version having limited replayability. But where was the rest of Ende Neu and Perpetuum Mobile? "Was ist ist", "Ein seltener Vogel", or "Selbstportrait mit Kater" would've been great. And while "Salamandrina" was excellent, where was what I take to be their best song, "Die Interimsliebenden"? (However, I know from recordings that the live arrangement sounds like half the song is missing.)

I like just about all the songs they played, but most lacked the intensity that dominated their 80s output. Even the experimental aspects of their 90s albums were missing. I can appreciate that they've grown and developed into yet another phase, but I still wonder where they might go from here. When I reviewed Lament, I had hoped that after seven years of little activity, they might enter a fourth stage of their creative life. However, now they are still playing the same set of 00s material and are barely acknowledging Lament. The setlist had no surprises nor any hints of the "Rampe" improvisations that once were a hallmark of their shows. Nonetheless, Neubauten still manage to fascinate me with almost everything they do, so I still harbor hope that they have more creativity left in them yet.

One more note: the band maintained their usual tradition of selling USB sticks after the show containing the complete concert. I found 25€ a bit expensive but still couldn't resist. However, when I got home and gave it a closer look and listen, I discovered that the audio was a mere 256 kbps mp3 file. The spectrogram is loud and appears overdriven and compressed. Clipping can be heard throughout the show, particularly during "The Garden". "How Did I Die?" even has skips in it. If you can ignore those faults, it's a fair record of the show. But without editing or the visual element, it sounds more like a bootleg than a professional job. I'm used to that level of quality, but at that price, I expect better. It's cool to have as a record of the show I saw, but as an independent live album, it's not particularly strong.

Scores:

The concert: B

The recording: C-

P.S. A recent concert at the new Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg can be seen on YouTube here. It's a slightly stronger set than what I saw and you can see all of the percussive creations in their full glory. The audio gets oddly terrible in the last song ("Redukt"), but otherwise it's quite well done.

Einstürzende Neubauten - Lament (2014)

Artist: Einstürzende Neubauten

Album: Lament

Release Date: 7 November 2014

Label: Mute (BMG)

Producer: Boris Wilsdorf and Einstürzende Neubauten

Tracklisting:
01. Kriegsmaschinerie
02. Hymnen [adaptation of various national anthems]
03. The Willy-Nicky Telegrams [adapted from telegraphs between Kaiser Wilhelm II and Tsar Nicholas II]
04. In de Loopgraf [Paul van den Broeck adaptation]
05. Der 1. Weltkrieg (Percussion Version)
06. On Patrol in No Man's Land [James Reese Europe cover]
07. Achterland [Paul van den Broeck adaptation]
08. Lament: Lament
09. Lament: Abwärtsspirale
10. Lament: Pater Peccavi [Clemens non Papa adaptation]
11. How Did I Die?
12. Sag mir wo die Blumen sind [Pete Seeger/Max Colpet cover]
13. Der Beginn des Weltkrieges 1914 (dargestellt unter Zuhilfenahme eines Tierstimmenimitators) [Joseph Plaut adaptation]
14. All of No Man's Land Is Ours [James Reese Europe cover]

Einstürzende Neubauten are a fascinating and long-lasting band, and one of a relatively small number of German bands that both regularly sing in German and manage to have a following in English-speaking countries. While they have consistently embraced experimentation, philosophical songwriting, and custom-built instrumentation, they have changed quite a bit through the years. From their earliest days as a percussive, punk-inspired noise band, they evolved through the 80s into something of an avant-garde industrial band. The height of their English-speaking popularity probably came in the 90s, when frontperson Blixa Bargeld started occasionally writing in English, their music began fitting into existing structures and patterns, and they even sometimes embraced melody. They were early adopters of not just a multimedia and internet-enabled experience, which seems to have kept them active and productive when they otherwise may have broken apart, but also the idea of self-releasing music instead of depending solely on mainstream distribution.

However, even being the longtime fan that I was, I started to get somewhat skeptical of the band in the late 00s. Their supporter's projects sounded cool, but they were too expensive for me at the time. Besides, the most of the songs on the first supporter's album ended up (albeit in alternate forms) on the public-release Perpetuum Mobile, which was clearly the better album anyway. The second supporter's album, Grundstück, wasn't very good, and the third, Jewels, wasn't either, and it even got a public release, despite earlier claims that it would not. The next major release, Alles wieder offen, had some great songs but on the whole seemed like a step down from their earlier albums. During this period, they also had released a series of eight highly experimental albums that I had no interest in whatsoever. The last blow was when they were forced to cancel their planned USA tour in 2010 due to visa problems. At that point, the band seemed to enter a period of less activity.

It wasn't until 2014 that they released another album, Lament, and it still remains unreleased outside of Europe (and Hong Kong!?). Disappointed by recent albums and discouraged by the rather high cost of importing the album, I abstained from acquiring it until a friend remarked that the album was "absolutely astounding" in terms of "packaging, production, fidelity, performance, composition, and theme". That was plenty enough to convince me to give it a try!

I was not disappointed. Lament is not at all like previous Neubauten records, although it is decidedly an album by the same band. The hallmark of self-made instrumentation is abundant in spades, and Bargeld's precise, dramatic vocal delivery immediately identifies this as the work of Neubauten. But where previous albums were focused on matters of theory and concept, this album is firmly grounded in a very real and specific historical event: the assault on Diksmuide, Belgium by the German army at the outbreak of World War I. The town commissioned the band to commemorate the hundred years' anniversary with a performance work, which was also "recreated" in the studio.

The album starts off deceptively quiet, but the gradually increasing clattering of "Kriegsmaschinerie" is meant to be read along with a text that describes the slow buildup that leads to war. This first track already proves that this is an album that requires more than just listening: the accompanying liner notes of the physical editions are essential. (The additional descriptions found on the band's website are also quite helpful.) Many other songs greatly benefit from the additional contextual information.

Almost every song has a unique story. "Hymnen" is a mashup of several national hymns, proving that they really are fairly meaningless and interchangeable. "The Willy-Nicky Telegrams" is a surprisingly successful vocoder duet, with Blixa as Kaiser Wilhelm II (left channel) and Alexander Hacke as Tsar Nicholas II (right channel). The two were cousins through marriage and exchanged friendly telegraphs even as they were mobilizing their armies. "Der 1. Weltkrieg" is a statistical composition, representing the individual nations at war with individual percussion instruments played for the duration of their participation. Two songs are minimalist, eerie adaptations of obscure Flemish poems about the mundanity of the soldier's life, and another two are basically covers of marching band tunes from the Harlem Hellfighter's military band. ("On Patrol in No Man's Land" even features lead vocals from Hacke!)

The centerpiece is a trilogy under the title of "Lament". It starts with an almost ambient piece of multi-layered vocals that builds up to the phrase, "die Mächtigen lieben den Krieg" ("the powerful love war"). This is followed by a downward spiral and then an adaptation of a Renaissance motet written by a composer that lived in Diksmuide. The latter is accompanied by the voices of various prisoners of war who were recorded by German linguists to document the wide variety of dialects and languages throughout Europe. It's a tricky matter to handle, but Neubauten treat it with the respect it deserves.

The last part of the album changes track a bit. "How Did I Die?" is an original composition that fits into the Neubauten canon well enough that it could have appeared on past albums without seeming out of place. "Sag mir wo die Blumen sind" ("Where Have All the Flowers Gone?") is a Pete Seeger song from the 1950s, translated into German and performed widely by Marlene Dietrich. The band's version is a rather minimal arrangement, but it's great to hear them take on the folk standard so successfully. "Der Beginn der Weltkrieges 1914" is a dramatic reading of a short story from 1926 telling of the onset of World War I from the perspective of various animals. It's a rather long track, and perhaps the one with the least relistening value, but it is particularly notable for ending with the appearance of Hitler!

While Neubauten have worked in theatre and have composed soundtracks before, this album is special for being a unique production with its own narrative and structure, but incorporating a wide variety of other sources. While an album so full of adaptations and covers is certainly an unusual step for the band, it seems to have rejuvenated the band and restored them to their creative best. The fact that it comes off so well in terms of content and sound makes it a resounding success. Considering how wonderful some of Neubauten's older cover versions are (Lee Hazelwood's "Sand" and Bonnie Dobson's "Morning Dew"), I wonder if Neubauten have an underappreciated talent for rearrangement and recontextualization.

Score: A

P.S. The one flaw of the album is that several sections of the liner notes are plagiarized straight from Wikipedia without credit. For example, the bit on the Harlem Hellfighters is copied from here, and the section on "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" is copied from here. The description of Joseph Plaut is clearly translated directly from his German article. Considering that the band supposedly hired two historians to help with their research, and Hartmut Fischer is credited with "literary research and text compilation", I would've expected someone to have treated that matter correctly.

P.P.S. Also, on "Achterland", Hacke is credited with performing "amplified crotches". This is clearly a typo and should read "amplified crutches", but I was slightly disgusted and humorously confused until I realized the error.