Einstürzende Neubauten
Alles Wieder Offen

"ALLES WIEDER OFFEN": everything is open again.

This is the title chosen by Einsturzende Neubauten to give an identity to their tenth studio work, 27 years away from their Berlin beginnings: 27 years that feel like an eternity when we think about how much everything has changed, the many walls that have fallen (not just the Berlin Wall) and the many others that still delineate our lives. Blixa Bargeld, now in his fifties, along with his lifelong friends are still there, straddling that ideal wall on which each of us lives, telling us new melancholies, playing with musical forms, presenting us with a sonic material that, from a past destructive nihilism, now finds itself painting the sweet outlines of unexpected nocturnes. The Neubauten, over all these years, have managed to live fully, avoiding easy mannerisms and have been attentive, in each of their works, to the uniqueness and unrepeatability that every true creative process pursues. Listening to an Einsturzende Neubauten album deserves this awareness, deserves the attention that should be paid to those who continue to seek that unique and indefinable relationship with musical form, with art, ignoring all the surrounding apparatus that always only cares about damn money and record companies... something to collapse (Neubauten docet!) always remains!!!... we can swear on it!!!

The new album, released on October 19, is signed by the line-up that still includes Jochen Arbeit and Rudolf Moser (who joined during the composition of "Silence is sexy" in 2000) alongside Blixa and his longtime collaborators Alexander Hacke and N.U Unru. The 10 songs that make up the new work, despite the time passed and the advancing years, still manage to surprise and say something not trivial and already heard: each track describes an ideal world that resonates with old Berlin memories but at the same time manages to take on a new form, a new garment that keeps leaving us so desperately in love with music. The beauty of listening to their music, deep and fascinating, lies precisely in seeing how the old destroyers of the past, with the same tools, now can create songs in the true sense of the word... those songs that can last even just 4 minutes... and the result is therefore totally unexpected and new... truly unique. The new work was anticipated by a track available for free download titled WEILWEILWEIL, an evolution of an improvisation recorded during a concert in Berlin in 2004 (you can find it on the Palast der Republick DVD), which may be the only slightly banal chapter of a truly beautiful album.

The first track, DIE WELLEN, is an emotional and dark crescendo driven by a dissonant piano and a rhythm that pulses like living flesh. NAGORNY KARABACH, a city or region in Azerbaijan, is one of the gems of the work, an emotional nocturne in which Blixa's voice travels alongside the sounds of Unruh's sheets of metal, describing impossible harmonies that spin around Hacke's stunning bass. ICH HATTE EIN WORT is a bouncing piece featuring a soft rhythm that makes you want to get drunk and dance on clouds with your dog. Another great song is VON WEGEN, from an oil-black bass that recalls the atmosphere of a track contained in "Ende Neu" (Die explosion im Fexpielhaus), which redraws the most unsettling scenarios of their production, with the remnants of industrial society returning to be percussed and where Blixa's stunning vocal style, first appeared in Redukt (Silence is sexy), shines. LET'S DO IT A DADA is an explicit reference to the Dadaist influence, as well as to the futurism represented by Neubauten in the stunning video of Blume, in which everyone engaged in playing Luigi Russolo's intonarumori: here their music is a long metallurgical ride filled with expressionist vocal oddities in which Russolo, along with Lenin and Marinetti, are named. The final compositions keep the listening level high, and among them stands out SUSEJ, with string lines (sampled by the faithful Ash Wednesday) entwining seductively with the bass lines, an instrument that has always constituted the true harmonic element in the Berliners' production, much more than the guitar limited to the effects of the e-bow.

"Alles wieder offen" closes with an acoustic guitar (played by Hacke, I believe), on which Bargeld's voice returns to be as deep as on the first track, just waiting for the return of the industrial metalwork that ends this latest collection of small masterpieces, beautiful in their absolute inimitability with which they manage to forge that mysterious bond with the dimension of art. And when it comes to art, one must refuse to give scores and rankings: all that is for brazen musical products, devised by their traders to sniff out wealth. Those who make art (even if they do not always succeed) look elsewhere... they themselves are curious about what they do... they feel they are linked to something that can in no way be reduced to their own stubbornness and will to define!

I believe that Einsturzende Neubauten still follow this path... and so, happy journey friends of a thousand listens!