Nobody knows the rubble I've seen

The subway train is coming. You can see its headlights shining down the tunnel like the lamp on a miner's cap. When it roars into the station, acrid steel dust-stings your nose and the wheels throw a heavy blanket of noise over commuter conversation. The loudspeaker squeals unintelligibly. EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN is a sonic subway ride. In German, the name means COLLAPSING NEW BUILDINGS. The band constructs its instruments from industrial refuse: oil drums, cement mixers, air-conditioning ducts, glass, old radios, scrap metal, wood and plastic, even flesh. They "play" these objects with metal rods, lead mallets, power drills, and fire. Marc Chung's bass and Blixa Bargeld's guitar are the last remnants of conventional musicianship. But even these two instruments appear in a context of cacophony, and Blixa, also the vocalist, says he cannot sing and play at the same time.

Ever since someone, somewhere, plugged in and strummed those first four chords, rock'n'roll has been furiously barricading itself into a corner. In some ways, as pop music expanded, it stiffened and became more predictable. Unfortunate, but inevitable. So anyone looking for the original, unsettled spirit of rock naturally would be looking elsewhere.

To synthesizers? NEUBAUTEN have chosen instead to synthesize.

"There was a critic for the last record saying that the bass line was played by a synthesizer", says Blixa, whose name is taken from a German brand of ballpoint pen. Drawings form O.T. (PVC/Jem), however, did not have any synthesizers. "They have a fixed idea... they can tell all the instruments of the orchestra, an electric guitar, or bass - but anything else is always a synthesizer".

Preconceived notions are NEUBAUTEN's prime target for destruction; their new EP contains a version of "Sand", a love song once performed by Nancy Sinatra. NEUBAUTEN is really two bands. One is to be heard live; the other, safely on the stereo. At home, you control the volume; as the listener you're also free to conjure imagery unconnected to the objects that inspire it. In performance, the band is deafening, and even dangerous. In LA an on-stage fire got out of hand and completely destroyed the Batcave stage props set up for the second act. This occurred after N. U. Unruh had unleashed his road drill and showered some record executives dining in the basement with falling plaster. News of the turmoil got back to New York faster than the band did. When they played their final US concert at Danceteria, someone arranged for a man with a fire extinguisher to be standing ready.

Flames are often a part of their stage show.

"How do you do it?" I asked Blixa.

"Molotov cocktails", he replied indifferently.

"What?" I didn't know whether to believe him or not.

"You don't know what a Molotov cocktail is?" He delivered the description in a thick German accent, savoring every detail. "It's a bottle two-thirds full of gasoline and one-third air. You close it up with a bandage. The proportions of the material inside the bottle - I don't know what it is exactly, but it doesn't just light up, it explodes. A little bomb".

Blixa insists that they never intend to hurt anyone. A story he is fond of repeating to journalist concerns a fan with an arm in bandages, who visited Blixa to deliver his compliments on a performance. The fan had been injured during a concert. "He didn't look unhappy", says Blixa. "It's true; he liked it. I've never met someone that said anything against getting hurt. They've all felt really amazed about it. And when we use a Molotov cocktail, most of the time we get hurt".

Obviously, anything that gets burned or drilled has to be replaced eventually. Thus, the band's collection of instruments is disposable, and undergoes continual metamorphosis. When NEUBAUTEN toured the US, much of their equipment was too large to ship by plane, or even to transport from town to town. Therefore, they scavenged for objects before each gig.

"Want to know were we found them?" Blixa asks mischievously. "Most of the things we find are around the venue itself; more or less, there's always a bit of junk laying around. It was a real problem in Los Angeles - too clean! We had to drive to a commercial, professional scrap yard".

NEUBAUTEN is not the first band to use construction equipment, or to orchestrate chaos or to celebrate impending apocalypse. Like the punks before them, they drill, shatter, beat, burn, and exquisitely torture what Blixa calls "fixed ideas". But behind the listener's throbbing eardrums, the drowsy inner ear awakes to a realization: this is music. Sometimes angry music: "Hell belongs to us anyway/Why should we share heaven?" ("Die Zechenungen des Patienten O.T."). Sometimes it's sad as in "Armenia", an eloquent collage of folk songs from a culture in exile.

What happens after all the factories close? Berliners, like this band. Already know the real meaning of "after the war". NEUBAUTEN propose a post - industrial faith in the human ability to pick up the pieces - to Americans, who've so far felt their "day after" as nothing more than a hangover.

Sue Cummings
"Spin", 06/1984