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Browse by Label: POTOMAK (GERMANY)


Artist: EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN
Title: Zeichnungen Des Patienten O.T./Drawings Of O.T.
Label: POTOMAK (GERMANY)
Format: LP
Price: $15.50
Catalog #: POTOMAK 819901
2002 release. LP version. Includes printed inner sleeve with lyrics in English and German.


Artist: EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN
Title: Zeichnungen Des Patienten O.T./Drawings Of O.T.
Label: POTOMAK (GERMANY)
Format: CD
Price: $15.50
Catalog #: POTOMAK 819902
2002 release. Originally released in 1983, Einstürzende Neubauten's second album marks a radical progression in the band's sound as well as a revolutionary step forward in the realms of industrial and experimental music. Bassist Marc Chung (ex-Abwärts) and electronics engineer Alexander Hacke (later a member of Crime And The City Solution) joined the band during this time, and singer Blixa Bargeld also became a full-time member of Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds. Despite each members' background, Einstürzende Neubauten's ethos -- "Destruction is not negative, you must destroy to build" -- treaded on ground that was explicitly anti-music. Through their intuitive compositional approach and application of found, industrial objects into song forms, the band's sonic trajectory was intent on generating entirely alternate modes of music-making. In contrast to the all-out destructive barrage of their debut, however, Zeichnungen Des Patienten O.T. reveals an astonishing maturity in its varied and dynamic range of textures while still being no less uncompromising. From the gritty live wire pulse of opening track "Vanadium-I-Ching" to the disorienting field recording and jarring mechanical upheaval of "Hospitalistiche Kinder/Engel Der Vernichtung" to the panicked steel abrasions of "Neun Arme," this album is a masterpiece of what-the-fuck urban primitivism. Most effective of all is "Armenia," one of the most essential songs the band has ever made, with its subtle, slow-building tension and haunting Armenian orchestration taking Bargeld's signature inhuman screams to uncharted levels of psychological turmoil. This digitally-remastered reissue includes 3 bonus tracks and comes housed in a deluxe six-panel tri-fold digipack with an attached 16-page booklet of lyrics in German and English.


Artist: EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN
Title: Haus Der Lüge
Label: POTOMAK (GERMANY)
Format: LP
Price: $15.50
Catalog #: POTOMAK 820001
2002 release. Gatefold LP version.


Artist: EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN
Title: Haus Der Lüge
Label: POTOMAK (GERMANY)
Format: CD
Price: $15.50
Catalog #: POTOMAK 820002
2002 release. This is the fifth album by Einstürzende Neubauten, originally released in 1989, now remastered. Highly energetic and possessed of a certain level of danceability, Haus Der Lüge was perhaps the most accessible for the band so far in terms of straightforward industrial-rock, with less grinding experimentation. However, this album is far from any sort of mainstream convention, with some of the most convincing alchemy of the best of the group's sonic clang, combined with some of the most captivating singing by Blixa Bargeld yet. The title track is a theatrical chug with the sounds of breaking glass, strings, and a strident vocal line, and "Schwindel" is a gentle, contemplative, almost spiritual drone-piece with jangly guitars, the quiet chime of wood tapped on bowls, and ascendant vocal chants. This album showcases all the best aspects of the band's musique concrète experimentation reigned in by impressive song-structure that doesn't diminish any of Einstürzende Neubauten's conceptual or ear-bashing impact. CD includes 3 bonus tracks and is housed in a 6-panel tri-fold digipack with an attached 14-page booklet of lyrics in German and English.


Artist: EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN
Title: Kollaps
Label: POTOMAK (GERMANY)
Format: LP
Price: $15.50
Catalog #: POTOMAK 825171
2003 release. LP version. Includes a large format 12-page booklet.


Artist: EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN
Title: Kollaps
Label: POTOMAK (GERMANY)
Format: CD
Price: $15.50
Catalog #: POTOMAK 825172
2003 release. Originally released in 1981, Kollaps is the seminal, form-destroying debut album by German industrial pioneers Einstürzende Neubauten (trans. "Collapsing New Buildings"). The band's use of junk metal, power drills, jackhammers and other surprising instrumentation would come to define their challenging and continually inventive career, making them not only one of the originators of industrial music, but one of the world's most influential and far-reaching forces at the intersection between avant-garde and rock music. Formed in 1980 in the wave of the Dadaist movement Die Geniale Dilletanten, after a series of devastating live performances and personnel changes (one of which briefly involving electronic musician Gudrun Gut), the band's line-up cemented itself with core members Blixa Bargeld, F.M. Einheit (previously of Hamburg-based post-punk band Abwärts) and N.U. Unruh. On Kollaps, a violent collision of urban primitivism and punk sensibilities, the trio declared war on every conventional way of listening, combining an intense mess of atonal guitar drones with brutal scrap metal percussion. At a time in Germany in which the wall encircling West Berlin transformed the city into a state-subsidized, near-paradisiacal freak-enclave for artists, Einstürzende Neubauten offered cathartic cascades of noise, employing steel parts, tin drums, drills, hammers, saws and untuned electric guitars, all crowned by Bargeld's bloodcurdling screams and feverish, apocalyptic texts. Kollaps, with its atonal essence, embodied exactly what the title suggested: decay and destruction, illness, doom and death. Years later, with the fall of the Berlin wall behind it, Kollaps still sounds as radical and extreme an artistic statement as ever. This expanded digipack reissue includes 10 bonus tracks, including 9 tracks from Stahldubversions, a rare 1982 cassette release. CD comes housed in a deluxe six-panel tri-fold digipack with 23-page attached booklet.


Artist: EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN
Title: 1/2 Mensch
Label: POTOMAK (GERMANY)
Format: LP
Price: $15.50
Catalog #: POTOMAK 826141
2002 release. LP version. Printed inner sleeve with lyrics in English and German.


Artist: EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN
Title: 1/2 Mensch
Label: POTOMAK (GERMANY)
Format: CD
Price: $15.50
Catalog #: POTOMAK 826142
2002 release. This is the third album by Einstürzende Neubauten, also known as Halber Mensch, originally released in 1985. The album opens with the startlingly oppressive, almost fully a cappella title track, with contrapuntal, atonal, en masse chanting. The album progresses to include quite a repertoire of electronically-generated sounds, finding the band developing their mishmash of industrial experimentation matched by terrifying clangs, stomps, and of course, the theatrical, poetic vocal delivery of Blixa Bargeld. An incredibly aggressive album, with insistent, pounding rhythms and razors on metal, and Bargeld's voice dominating your dreams for a month after listening. Members include: Blixa Bargeld, Mark Chung, F.M. Einheit, Alexander Hacke, and N.U. Unruh. Housed in a six-panel tri-fold digipack including an attached 6-page booklet with lyrics in German and English. Includes 3 bonus tracks, including a remix of "Yü-Gung" by Adrian Sherwood.


Artist: EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN
Title: Fünf Auf Der Nach Oben Offenen Richterskala
Label: POTOMAK (GERMANY)
Format: LP
Price: $15.50
Catalog #: POTOMAK 826501
2002 release. LP version. Printed inner sleeve.


Artist: EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN
Title: Fünf Auf Der Nach Oben Offenen Richterskala
Label: POTOMAK (GERMANY)
Format: CD
Price: $15.50
Catalog #: POTOMAK 826502
Digitally-remastered 2002 release. This is the fourth album by German avant-garde industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten, originally released in 1987. The bonus track "Adler Kommt Spaeter" is an early version of "Zerstörte Zelle." Considerably lower-key than all their previous releases, Fünf Auf Der Nach Oben Offenen Richterskala (trans. "Five On The Open-Ended Richter Scale"), with especially puzzling, almost country-rock track "Morning Dew," sung in English, but with moments of whip-cracking and atomic explosions. There's the same attention to rhythmic assault on this record as on the others, but there's a quieter, more sinister, darker, lower-key ambience at work here, with Blixa Bargeld's vocals right at the center-front of the mix, as he experiments with breath, lower pitches, whispers, and barely-audible squeals. There's a barely-restrained, beautiful tension here that never gets resolved, sounding as if the band is holding itself back from complete annihilation. CD is housed in a 6-panel tri-fold digipack with an attached 10-page booklet of lyrics in German and English.


Artist: EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN
Title: Alles Wieder Offen
Label: POTOMAK (GERMANY)
Format: 2LP
Price: $23.00
Catalog #: POTOMAK 904431
2007 release. Working outside normal record business market mechanisms, Einstürzende Neubauten recorded this album over some 200 days in their own studio funded by their world-wide network of subscribing supporters via www.neubauten.org. Possibly informed by the title of 2000's Silence Is Sexy, the word on the international music scene was that Einstürzende Neubauten had become calmer, quieter even. Alles Wieder Offen blows this assumption out of the water; it is an urgent and compelling album in every aspect. The instruments do not exhaust themselves by a consumptive struggle against each other as they might have on prior recordings, but instead create an unprecedented fusion of Einstürzende Neubauten-typical instruments with conventional ones. Alexander Hacke's bass has never sounded warmer, Jochen Arbeit's guitar more graceful, the metal of Rudolf Moser and the percussion of N.U. Unruh more unsettling and diverse, or Blixa Bargeld's voice more mercurial yet forceful. It's the little details that first draw the attention: Jochen Arbeit's whizzing guitar on "Unvollständigkeit," seeming to anticipate the outburst that follows: a rain of light, falling aluminum sticks; the way Alexander Hacke electronically deconstructs Rudolph Moser's rounded, flowing rhythm on "Weilweilweil"; the deft combination of uplifting organ and the almost tender feedback that rends the sky open on "Nagorny Karabach." This album also is very conscious of the band's history. On a lyrical level, "Unvollständigkeit" is a sister piece to both "DNS/Wasserturm" (1983) as well as "Redukt" (of Silence Is Sexy, 2000); "Nagorny Karabach" refers to "Armenia" (1983), which is the sun of the EN-cosmos; "Von Wegen" quotes both their first single and a line from the song "Sehnsucht" from Kollaps (1981). Moreover, musically "Von Wegen" mirrors the structure of "Zerstörte Zelle" (1987). "Susej" is based around a rhythm guitar figure that Bargeld recorded in a flooded cellar of the Hafenklangstudio in Hamburg in the early '80s. Many layers have deposited themselves around the group's original nucleus. At the same time, the energy and the sheer willpower of the early days is still powerfully evident here. Perhaps the most emotionally-affecting and intellectually-stimulating album of Einstürzende Neubauten's career. Gatefold with full color printed inner sleeves.


Artist: EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN
Title: The Jewels
Label: POTOMAK (GERMANY)
Format: LP
Price: $28.50
Catalog #: POTOMAK 919781
Originally released between 2006-2007 digitally track-by-track at a time, and only available to web site subscribers of the "Phase III Supporter Project," Einstürzende Neubauten's The Jewels was assembled piece-by-piece and was contextually drawn from singer Blixa Bargeld's dreams. Eventually officially released on Potomak in 2008, The Jewels is now available on vinyl. The Jewels album is the result of an experiment to search for a navigation system, which led the band back into hidden niches of the Einstürzende Neubauten universe that have not been especially brightly illuminated before now; into those corners, which have remained in the dark or have been forgotten despite two decades of restless movement. This visualization of their musical cosmos began at the same time as work on Alles Wieder Offen (POTOMAK 904431). Initially, these miniatures were conceived only as download presents for the supporters of "Phase 3" of www.neubauten.org. Consequently, the time that could be spent on jewel-cutting was limited; two days had to suffice to go from the first inspiration to a finished song. The result is a concept album with miniatures -- small jewels, 2-3 minutes in length, about which Neubauten say: "At first we considered this process a gigantic digression, but after a while we noticed that the excursions that led us away from the normal album work were justified by the results, because they allowed us to deliver some of our most ego-free compositions up to now." Deluxe gatefold packaging, including a 20-page booklet with full-color photos, a text by Blixa Bargeld and lyrics in German and English.


Artist: BARGELD, BLIXA
Title: Commissioned Music
Label: POTOMAK (GERMANY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: POTOMAK 919792
2008 release. Originally released in 1995, this is the solo debut release from legendary Einstürzende Neubauten performer/vocalist/actor/musician, Blixa Bargeld. Commissioned Music collects several of Bargeld's work for theater and film. Features a collaboration with his replacement in the Bad Seeds, Roland Wolf, for the film Jahre Der Kälte and theatrical piece Dumpfe Stimmen (which includes Bargeld's incredible and Lynch-ian rendition of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow"). Commissioned Music features a wide swathe of minimal instrumentation -- chimes paired with bass, lyre with glockenspiel, piano with shimmering slide guitar and droning, static-y electronics to create darkly ambient mood-pieces, and smoky theatrical numbers from behind the black velvet curtain. The music for Jahre Der Kälte is based on a cadence by Franz Schubert. Blixa's vocals cover all his usual spectrums: from parlor-croons, to deep-as-graves intonations, to high death-rattle aspirations. An essential collection for all true Blixa Bargeld and EN fans.


Artist: DE PICCIOTTO & ALEXANDER HACKE, DANIELLE
Title: The Ship Of Fools
Label: POTOMAK (GERMANY)
Format: DVD/CD
Price: $23.00
Catalog #: POTOMAK 919808
2008 release. DVD plus audio CD with 10 tracks. Story: Sebastian Brant's medieval novel The Ship Of Fools (1458) has been an inspiration for numerous seafaring artists throughout the centuries. The image of a ship filled with fools, seafaring through the oceans of life appealed to Danielle de Picciotto and Alexander Hacke, inspiring them to compose a show based on fools described in the book. Deep bass lines, scraping metal, melancholic autoharps, violent guitar riffs, bizarre sound recordings, entwined with Hacke's magnificent singing and Danielle's mystic lyrics are illuminated by intricate projections depicting illustrated scenes of fools' debauchery. This luxurious package contains a filmed documentary of the premiere in Berlin on the 1st of December 2007 and a CD with music from the show. The beautiful visuals and soundtrack of the performance are enriched by inserted interviews illustrating how the artists went about creating the performance while touring the world. Their comments on redefining Sebastian Brant's fools are humorous yet pensive -- an artist's perspective on how mankind has or has not developed, after investigating its medieval history. CD length: 88 minutes. DVD picture format 16:9 color; DVD type: DVD-5; NTSC. Housed in a tri-fold, 6-panel deluxe digipack.


Artist: ARBEIT
Title: Solo
Label: POTOMAK (GERMANY)
Format: CD/DVD
Price: $23.00
Catalog #: POTOMAK 919812
2008 release. Einstürzende Neubauten guitarist Jochen Arbeit presents a collection of 10 years of his solo works for film, theater, performance pieces, and installations. Some of the highlights include: "Burlesque," made for the film Die Unerzogenen by Pia Marais, and recorded in 2006. The piece was ultimately rejected and was subsequently used in a Stupid Green art performance. "Piece For Adidas" was used in a sound-installation for Adidas at the "Bread And Butter" fashion fare at the "Kraftwerk," Berlin 2007. The company commissioned the building of a wellness room with foot massages, beds, interactive monitors, etc., in a completely white room. This piece ran there for 2 days straight. Arbeit's work is richly detailed and often looped -- dark bass and reedy electronics mingling with rough guitars, Rhodes, vibraphones, Chinese zithers, saarang, computer-generated voices, and other accoutrements. Also included is a DVD containing 4 videos and 3 Surround Sound mixes. Housed in a tri-fold, 6-panel deluxe digipack, including a fold-out poster insert of the cover art, with liner notes on the reverse.


Artist: EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN
Title: Ende Neu
Label: POTOMAK (GERMANY)
Format: LP
Price: $15.50
Catalog #: POTOMAK 919821
LP version. Available on vinyl for the first time.


Artist: EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN
Title: Ende Neu
Label: POTOMAK (GERMANY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: POTOMAK 919822
Einstürzende Neubauten's Potomak label reissues their classic 1996 release, Ende Neu -- originally released on the Mute label, now available with digipak CD artwork and also reissued for the first time on vinyl. On this release, the quintessential scientists of the post-avant-garde abstain from focusing on listener disintegration tactics as they did on prior albums, but opt instead to hone their craftsmanship in new compositional areas. Some followers of their earlier material might object to the obvious and comparatively conventional song structure and style that is displayed on Ende Neu -- picking up a power tool to highlight a piece rather than centering the entire work around it, or leaving a stage before setting it ablaze -- but the destruction has already been performed, and here they erect a brave new anti-building of musical art. Exploring intricate processions of time and toying with melodious harmonies, this album reveals Blixa Bargeld and company maturing gracefully. The opening cut, "Was Ist Ist," is a furious, fast-paced slander of the greediness of mankind while simultaneously serving as a tongue-in-cheek remark on how absolute, scientific power overrules impossibility. From there, Ende Neu continues to musically rewrite the band's style, using familiar topics such as ethereal chaos ("Die Explosion Im Festspielhaus"), cosmic complacency ("The Garden"), revolt ("Installation Nº.1"), and even a Kafka-esque piece, "Der Schacht Von Babel." This was the band's first release after the departure of founding band member Mark Chung, and it is obvious that the remaining members took the time to contribute to the void left by his departure. Ende Neu delivers a precision-fed matrix of audio-encrypted knowledge in a manner not like the chaotic Neubauten of the early '80s, but more strategic, and more mature. Dark, focused explosions, with theatrical strings and tightly-wound vocal structures. This reissue includes reworked artwork and the CD version contains the bonus track "Bili Rubin," plus videoclips and sound samples.


Artist: MOSER
Title: Moser
Label: POTOMAK (GERMANY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: POTOMAK 919852
2008 release. This is the first solo album by Einstürzende Neubauten drummer, instrument maker and composer Rudi Moser. These 16 tracks resemble short story miniatures whose range of sounds and tones are developed from associative motifs extracted from feathers, a dulcimer, glasses, aluminum pipes, tires, an out-of-tune e-guitar and a Wurlitzer piano -- all of it backed up by some incredibly solid percussion, and some bracing electronics. Possessing a more pared-down, minimalistic approach to sound composition, but with all of EN's hard-driving force compelling it forward.


Artist: MEYERS, ARI BENJAMIN
Title: Symphony X
Label: POTOMAK (GERMANY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: POTOMAK 921492
Berlin-based composer/musician Ari Benjamin Meyers presents Symphony X -- a work of symphonic scale that combines elements of hardcore, experimental, and minimal music into an entirely original musical texture. Meyers has written this 70-minute composed piece specifically for his unique 17-member Redux Orchestra, which includes saxophones, brass, strings, electric guitar, electric bass, drums, and electronics. This physically demanding work combines complex, repetitive instrumental arrangements with electro-noise, martial percussion rhythms, and intense guitar melodies. At a constant tempo of 120bpm, it escalates into a veritable tour de force. The intensity of Symphony X rests on its extremes: static, pounding repetition, layered against an almost unnoticeably-slow variation of melodic and harmonic patterns -- a compositional style that Steve Reich characterized as "gradual process." By uniting the formalistic structures of classical and minimal music with the sonic palette of rock, hardcore, and electronic music, Meyers has further developed his musical language, and with Symphony X, has taken it to a new level. Meyers builds upon experiences gained from collaborations with Philip Glass, Einstürzende Neubauten, The Residents, Morton Subotnik, The Orb, and Sun Electric, among others, as well as his work for classical institutions, including the Semper Opera Dresden and the Berlin State Opera. Nevertheless, Symphony X is not a crossover work, but a musical hybrid that will get the attention of audiences both at the classical symphony hall and at rock music festivals: two arenas that are very familiar to Ari Benjamin Meyers and his Redux Orchestra. With Symphony X, Ari Benjamin Meyers has created a work that demands we reconsider what we think we know about "new music." Artwork is by the internationally-known video and installation artist Anri Sala, and is taken from his video Three Minutes.


Artist: DE PICCIOTTO & ALEXANDER HACKE, DANIELLE
Title: Hitman's Heel
Label: POTOMAK (GERMANY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: POTOMAK 954952
Alexander Hacke is known as the bass player of Einstürzende Neubauten and main figure in Fatih Akins' movie Crossing The Bridge: The Sound Of Istanbul. Besides collaborating in countless bands on the side, he has also been composing film scores for two decades. Danielle de Picciotto was a singer for Space Cowboys and Gudrun Gut's Ocean Club and is an icon in Berlin's creative underground. She is also the co-founder of the Love Parade together with Dr. Motte. Her art and film projects are exhibited internationally. Hacke and de Picciotto have been a huge influence on Berlin's underground scene since the '80s and have been touring the world with their collaborations since 2000. This album goes back to the basics. After deciding to give up their house in Berlin in 2010, the couple is on the road in search of new horizons. Celebrating this restless nomadic lifestyle, they decided to go back to classic songwriting, without sequencing or electronic processing. Concentrating purely on their instruments (guitar, autoharp, keyboards, drums), their songs can be performed on any stage and unplugged. Disregarding fashion, conventions or everyday standards, their lyrics speak of the world they are discovering: solitude, magic and freedom. The brew-ballads, gypsy rolls, Italo Western piano tunes, heavy guitar riffs and autoharp transport the audience into the world of the uncompromising explorer.


Artist: EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN
Title: Silence Is Sexy
Label: POTOMAK (GERMANY)
Format: 2LP
Price: $29.00
Catalog #: POTOMAK 957051
Gatefold vinyl reissue of Einstürzende Neubauten's Silence Is Sexy, originally released in 2000 from singer Blixa Bargeld and his band partners (N.U. Unruh, Alexander Hacke, Jochen Arbeit and Rudolf Moser). This vinyl double album contains the track "Pelikanol," first available as a bonus track with the 2000 release of the album and now for the first time available on vinyl. A concept of "conceptlessness" was created at that time from a spontaneous idea (many thought it was an April Fool's joke when Einstürzende Neubauten first stood on the stage at Berlin's "Moon" on April 1, 1980; now over 30 years ago), from which the "brilliant dilettantes" developed their own strategy against social and musical architecture using metal pipes, feathers and machines. 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 musical landscape as lastingly as Einstürzende Neubauten. Their influence on the music world was and is as great as their timeless character. Silence Is Sexy finally receives a long-awaited reissue on the band's own label Potomak. The element of surprise was and continues to be routine for Einstürzende Neubauten. On Silence Is Sexy they masterfully celebrate the unexpected in the exploration of silence. It is a wonderful album in the classical Neubauten sense; lyrical and melancholy. It's a musical coming-of-age from metal-defying scrap iron sound to constructed melodiousness, with a familiar rhythmic undertow -- playful, arrogant, poetic, subversive, dandified and mature. From its first release in 2000 (marking the 20-year existence of the band) to date, it has doubtlessly remained the group's most complex work and the most fascinating in its evolution. It shows the Neubauten universe from both a known, emotionally moving side, as well as one that is deliberately constructive. It clearly breathes the inimitably rough Neubauten handwriting, while Blixa's voice cuts through intellectual and cryptic texts. It is carried by metal sounds, from which individual instruments can almost no longer be extracted -- and by silence. Ultimately, nearly inaudible tones or laughter in the right place can seem more destructive than the most enduring rage. This is an album that won't be ignored; a unique appearance in the history of German rock music. 180 gram audiophile pressing.


Artist: EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN
Title: Silence Is Sexy
Label: POTOMAK (GERMANY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: POTOMAK 957052
Reissue of Einstürzende Neubauten's Silence Is Sexy, originally released in 2000 from singer Blixa Bargeld and his band partners (N.U. Unruh, Alexander Hacke, Jochen Arbeit and Rudolf Moser). A concept of "conceptlessness" was created at that time from a spontaneous idea (many thought it was an April Fool's joke when Einstürzende Neubauten first stood on the stage at Berlin's "Moon" on April 1, 1980; now over 30 years ago), from which the "brilliant dilettantes" developed their own strategy against social and musical architecture using metal pipes, feathers and machines. 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 musical landscape as lastingly as Einstürzende Neubauten. Their influence on the music world was and is as great as their timeless character. Silence Is Sexy finally receives a long-awaited reissue on the band's own label Potomak. The element of surprise was and continues to be routine for Einstürzende Neubauten. On Silence Is Sexy they masterfully celebrate the unexpected in the exploration of silence. It is a wonderful album in the classical Neubauten sense; lyrical and melancholy. It's a musical coming-of-age from metal-defying scrap iron sound to constructed melodiousness, with a familiar rhythmic undertow -- playful, arrogant, poetic, subversive, dandified and mature. From its first release in 2000 (marking the 20-year existence of the band) to date, it has doubtlessly remained the group's most complex work and the most fascinating in its evolution. It shows the Neubauten universe from both a known, emotionally moving side, as well as one that is deliberately constructive. It clearly breathes the inimitably rough Neubauten handwriting, while Blixa's voice cuts through intellectual and cryptic texts. It is carried by metal sounds, from which individual instruments can almost no longer be extracted -- and by silence. Ultimately, nearly inaudible tones or laughter in the right place can seem more destructive than the most enduring rage. This is an album that won't be ignored; a unique appearance in the history of German rock music.

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