{"id":14525,"date":"2026-05-11T05:31:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T05:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gradualhate.info\/?p=14525"},"modified":"2026-05-11T06:03:45","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T06:03:45","slug":"einsturzende-neubauten-greatest-hits-2-x-vinyl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gradualhate.info\/?p=14525","title":{"rendered":"Einst\u00fcrzende Neubauten – Greatest Hits (2 \u00d7 Vinyl)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Einst\u00fcrzende Neubauten – Greatest Hits (2 \u00d7 Vinyl)<\/strong>
Label: Potomak \u200e\u2013 LP133951
Format: 2 \u00d7 Vinyl, LP, Compilation
Country: Germany
Released: 25 Nov 2016
Style: Avantgarde, Experimental, Industrial<\/p>\n

A concept of \u201cconceptlessness\u201d was created at that time from a spontaneous idea (many thought it was an April Fool\u2019s joke when the Einst\u00fcrzende Neubauten first stood on the stage at Berlin\u2019s \u201cMoon\u201d on April 1, 1980; more than 35 years ago), from which the \u201cbrilliant dilettantes\u201d 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.
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 EINST\u00dcRZENDE 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 Einst\u00fcrzende Neubauten\u2019s 2004 album said it right: Perpetuum Mobile. Once fully set in motion \u2013 by West Berliners Blixa Bargeld and NU Unruh and Alexander Hacke in the early 1980s \u2013 Einst\u00fcrzende Neubauten have pressed on regardless. Indeed since percussionist Rudolf Moser and former Die Haut guitarist Jochen Arbeit joined 19 years ago, the Einst\u00fcrzende Neubauten line-up has not only been their longest lasting; going on the evidence gathered here, it\u2019s arguably their broadest ranging and most fruitful partnership, with Rudi and Jochen always gamely responding to the musical challenges posed by NU Unruh\u2019s 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\u2019s Ende Neu), they willingly switch between their chosen instruments and NU Unruh\u2019s 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? \u201cWe didn\u2019t die\u201d, sings Blixa, \u201cwe\u2018re just singing a different song\u201d.
\u201cThe difference\u201d, he goes on to clarify, \u201cis in the song\u201d.
The song in question, \u201cHow Did I Die?\u201d, comes from Lament, Einst\u00fcrzende Neubauten\u2019s 2014 soundtrack to a specially commissioned live performance by the Belgian Flemish town of Diksmuide to mark the centenary of its fall to German troops at the outbreak of the First World War. It might be steeped in the history of catastrophe but it\u2019s also the newest track on Greatest Hits, the compilation album named after the special shows they\u2019ve been touring the world with these past few years, initially while they were researching and preparing Lament for its Belgian premiere performance.
The music for those Greatest Hits shows was largely drawn from the last 27 years, and then most all of it created by their current longest lasting line-up. The earliest track here, however, is a newly mixed version of \u201cHaus Der L\u00fcge\u201d, the title track of their 1989 album Haus Der L\u00fcge; except it\u2019s now adorned with freshly recorded trombone and string parts, which the group wanted on the original but couldn\u2019t afford, so had to use synth simulations instead. 1993\u2019s Tabula Rasa is represented by two tracks, \u201cDie Interimsliebenden\u201d and \u201cSalamandrina\u201d. It\u2019s the last album to feature bass player Mark Chung, who joined in 1981 shortly after FM Einheit, aka Mufti, while they were both members of the Hamburg punk group Abw\u00e4rts. Mufti himself left during the recording of 1996\u2019s Ende Neu, and he doesn\u2019t actually feature on Greatest Hits\u2019 opening track \u201cThe Garden\u201d, the first line of which was inspired by an English woman overheard by Blixa: \u201cIf you want me you will find me in the garden\/Unless it\u2019s pouring down with rain\u201d.
Here begins proper the phantasmagoric journeys documented on Greatest Hits, taking Einst\u00fcrzende Neubauten \u2013 so the song goes \u2013 to the banks of all four rivers and the spring of consciousness, through all four seasons while waiting for the apple to fall. And the music they\u2019ve made on those journeys has reflected those changing seasons, responding to the changing times, refracting those hard knocks. Five tracks are taken from their 2000 album Silence Is Sexy: \u201cSabrina\u201d, \u201cSonnenbarke\u201d, \u201cTotal Eclipse Of The Sun\u201d, \u201cRedukt\u201d and \u201cDie Befindlichkeit Des Landes\u201d. , Translating as \u201cThe Lay Of The Land\u201d, \u201cDie Befindlichkeit Des Landes\u201d also featured in Einst\u00fcrzende Neubauten\u2019s melancholic soundtrack to Hubertus Siegert\u2019s Berlin Babylon, a 2001 documentary about the changing face of the purportedly unified city since the November 1989 fall of the Cold War-built Wall dividing it since 1961. The ten minute piece \u201cRedukt\u201d, meanwhile, has become a live favourite, long ago replacing the early Einst\u00fcrzende Neubauten staple \u201cSehnsucht\u201d, both as a showcase for the group\u2019s extraordinary capacity for invention, and as a vent for the emotions accumulated over the course of a concert.
During the 2000s, Einst\u00fcrzende Neubauten\u2019s resourcefulness extended beyond the stage and the recording studio into the economics of alternative music practice. In response to the worldwide decline of the record industry, neubauten.org webmaster (and Blixa\u2019s wife) Erin Zhu proposed a new working model based on the close relationship built up between the group and their fans. Her business plan provided Einst\u00fcrzende Neubauten the means to bypass the ever more controlling music industry and continue down their own path, as indeed they always have done. Two Greatest Hits tracks, \u201cDead Friends (Around The Corner)\u201d and \u201cEin Leichtes Leises S\u00e4useln\u201d, originated on their Supporters Album #1, which in publicly modified form became Perpetuum Mobile (Mute, 2004). Something like 2000 supporters financially pledged their faith in Einst\u00fcrzende Neubauten two more times, for which they received Grundst\u00fcck (2005) as their first dividend, followed by a special supporters\u2019 version of the self-released Alles Wieder Offen (Potomak, 2007). The latter provides the following three tracks to Greatest Hits: Einst\u00fcrzende Neubauten\u2019s playful homage to early 20th century\u2019s dada pranksters \u201cLet\u2019s Do It A Da Da\u201d, \u201cSusej\u201d and \u201cNagorny Karabach\u201d.
The last named is a simultaneously haunting and heartbreakingly beautiful psychogeographical piece that stands as one of Einst\u00fcrzende Neubauten\u2019s greatest album hits. As the song indicates, they have taken more than a few hard knocks, bumps and glitches on the way, but there\u2019s no stopping them now.
Now as then as always, declares Greatest Hits\u2019 aforementioned newest track \u201cHow Did I Die?\u201d, \u201cThe difference makes the song\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n\n\n
\n