EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN: RAMPEN (APM)
ALBUM REVIEW: Einstürzende Neubauten's latest 17 track epic gets the attention it deserves.
EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN: RAMPEN (APM)
POTOMAK RECORDS
5 APRIL 2024
Blixa Bargeld’s near-45 year transformation, from mischievous Puck to Grand Dame of The Arts, has been fascinating to watch.
The once unapproachable, impish deviant is now no less subversive, but his approach - unflinching high camp, fearsome intellect, elegant paunch and austere sense of humour - has lent our hero a rosy-nosed accessibility and maturity that is even more compelling than the emaciated screaming pixie of yore.
Unlike his ex-partner in crime, Nick Cave, whose evolution has led him to gospel choirs and evangelical sermons, Blixa, whose career can be charted in parallel and often through symbiosis, is delivering some of the most relevant and compelling work of his life.
Enabled, of course, as ever, by Hacke, Unruh, Moser and Arbeit, Rampen feels more vital and more on the nose than anything younger and ostensibly more dynamic bands have released in 2024.
Neubauten no longer need to prove the strength of their material physically; they can stand back, barefoot, and calmly present their material as adults - to adults - and it holds more strength because of that.
None of which is to suggest that they have tamed themselves or that they have lost their energy - quite the opposite - but they have gained a dignity that makes them stand out just as much as their amphetamised debauchery did, in a different way, 40 years ago.
Their stoic and subversive approach to presentation, as well as the music, makes them exciting, engaging and credible, in a way other artists in their mid-60s might seem past it, soulless or just in it for the money.
They’re not doing it for free, of course - a cursory glance at an interview or two on YouTube will clarify Blixa’s frustration with the industry and how he doesn’t feel adequately compensated for his hard work - but they also reveal the self-initiated solutions Neubauten provided to the problem; they essentially invented crowdfunding for music, back in 2002, to remove the necessity of reliance on record labels.
They also work with their fans, involving them completely in the life of the band. Respectfully including them in the business of creating new material, responding to feedback on early ideas and genuinely opening up the process to everyone involved - acknowledging that their community is an integral part of it.
To hear Blixa talk about that and how valuable it is to everyone involved, is humbling.
The communal aspect of these proceedings also offers exclusive insight and contact with the band members; through videos, chat or - and to my dying day I will regret missing out on this - a Bargeld-guided coach tour of Berlin’s historic Neubauten beauty spots, in April this year, as part of a supporter’s weekend.
If that doesn’t conjure hilarious visions in your mind, exposing the band’s self-deprecating humour in an “On The Buses” style, then I can’t help you, I’m afraid. Their po-faced reputation shredded in an instant. It must have been the Best. Day. Ever.
Earlier this month, as some kind of self-imposed compensation for missing it, we traveled to Berlin to indulge our own tour, sans Blixa, unfortunately. High on our list of objectives was to locate Risiko, a bar that he tended in the 80s.
Just to soak up the nostalgia and feel like we’d trodden in his hallowed winkel-picked footsteps.
Nowadays, the building is an easily-missed office used for booking driving lessons.
There’s an anti-climactic metaphor in there somewhere.
Hiding in plain sight, or some-such.
It seemed weird to us though, that a place so iconic to (our) sense of pop-cultural importance was just a disregarded shopfront that people were wandering past with complete ignorance of its significance.
That’s probably the metaphor: ignored significance.
And to that point, why the fuck isn’t everyone talking about Rampen?
If one LP was released this year that should not be passed by without note, it is that.
My copy is a thing of beauty. Limited double LP, yellow vinyl, pretty poster inside. Embossed logo on the vulgar yellow sleeve… it stands out. Which makes it all the more alarming that I’ve barely seen it available for sale in record shops here in the UK in the last five months, since its release.
I go to a LOT of record shops. It’s my most indulgent pass-time. I’ve seen it on the shelves twice, across what must realistically amount to 50 or so visits to brick and mortar stores in that time.
WHY?
Is it shitty distribution? Or have the generations shifted within the stores now? Are the Millennials who now run them ignorant of Neubauten and so don’t stock the releases?
I can’t figure it out, because regardless of historic significance or nostalgia, with Rampen, the band have created an intensely relevant and contemporary album of Alien Pop Music, beyond genre. One I would have thought would have appealed to the broadest audience of their career. It feels conspiratorial that getting hold of it physically is as difficult as it is, if you’re not specifically looking for it online. It’s a travesty. I would have also thought that Neubauten’s fan-base was very much the vinyl audience. We’re fat and middle-aged. We’re just about the only ones who can afford to buy records, these days.
Regardless; I hope anyone reading this will rectify that and go and buy it. It’s brilliant.
Listen to it digitally here, as a taster, not as an alternative:
There’s not a single shitty song on the album, but the first side, of (my) four, is particularly memorable. Ist Ist (Is Is) was the preview track and it’s a good choice, as it is, if such a thing is possible, the most “typical” Neubauten track on Rampen and the one most likely to draw people in through familiarity.
It is followed by my favourite track of the album, the most memorable, and the song that epitomises most the dour humour of Blixa’s lyrics; a nonsense that can be completely missed if you’re not looking for it.
The track opens with Blixa telling us how he’s sitting in his chair, feeling very “Pestalozzi”. For those who can’t be arsed to Google it, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi was a Swiss educator in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, responsible for almost entirely wiping out illiteracy in his home country.
So far, so highfalutin.
But then, the rest of the lyrics take the form of a list of esoteric items - from a left-handed corkscrew to a four digit combination lock from a long-gone library and a cellar full of noise.
At first listen you can’t help wondering what strange, alchemical concoction these ingredients could possibly pertain to. What archaic ritual would Blixa be performing with them? It must be dark. It must be dismal. It must be dangerous.
And then you realise that Blixa is simply reading out his list of Amazon purchases.
Somehow, that exposes more enigmatic genius to me than any amount of clandestine ceremonial narration could.
A Cellar Full of Noise, which one struggles to envision as an item from Amazon, is, in fact, Brian Epstein’s memoir of the Beatles’ early days at the Cavern.
It should be noted that Rampen means the same in German as it does in English - a ramp, or a point to take off from. It is relevant because almost all these songs began life as live improvisations - either at soundcheck or as part of a set given over to experimentation. Those studies were permitted to evolve into the songs herein, either as they were, or as fragments leading to new musical destinations.
Side Two contains Isso Isso (That’s Right), which more keenly betrays its improvisational roots than other songs, with its repetitious beat and chanting lyrics. The preceding track, Before I Go, another favourite, charts in detail the things that Blixa does before he leaves home for any length of time - from turning off the router to leaving a message on the door. Its exploration of mundanity is somehow enlightening. Besser Isses (Better Like That) should not be overlooked either. It’s an epic grower, depicting Blixa’s dissatisfaction with life, humanity and expectation. It’s a track that will perform well live, no doubt.
I hope they play it next week, at Shephard’s Bush Empire.
Side Three is calm, and consists of three songs, seemingly thematically related through a sense of suffocation or drowning - The Pit of Language being the standout of the three. The third track, Tar & Feathers, is the least engaging track of the album. Set over a droning chord and revisiting lyrics from The Pit of Language, it’s the one song I can skip if I’m not feeling patient enough to ride it out. Its five minute runtime can feel twice as long, sometimes.
Perhaps that because I’m hungry to get to Side Four. Aus den Zeiten (From the Times) is a late highlight and seemingly the reason the artwork for the album is coloured as it is. Next up is the difficult, but rewarding Ick Wees Nich (Noch Nich) (I Dunno (Not Yet), which is the track that has the most trad industrial feel, with clattering percussion, found sounds and samples providing a noisy bed for Blixa’s narration.
The album finishes with a slow fade rather than a bang. Both the beautiful Trilobiten (Trilobites), with its atmospheric, accordion like drones that conjure an image of a Blixa as a lonely Parisienne cliché, and the warbling Gesundbrunnen (Fountain of Health) have dream-like qualities that seem to soundtrack the post-action comedown of Rampen.
Those expecting the abominable clatter of Neubauten’s earliest work will be sorely disappointed. Likewise, Rampen moves on from the discordant electronic experimentation of Tabula Rasa, Ende Neu or Silence is Sexy.
This is genuinely alien pop music. It’s entirely its own thing. I can’t think of anyone or anything that remotely sounds like them. They are still constructing their songs from found items and self-made instruments, but there is a melodicism at play these days that wasn’t so profound in their material before 2020’s Alles in Allem. Though Rampen exceeds that album’s artistic achievements, as much as I love it.
Neubauten are one of the only bands that I can think of who truly create magic with their work.
And it is the purest form of magic. It leaves you a different person for imbibing it. You grow, for having it in your life. It indulges you. It is conjured - literally - from nothing.
It is art.
It is abstract.
It is alien.
Einstürzende Neubauten on Bandcamp
Thanks. I didn't even know there was a new album. I'll listen to it, probably before Wild God.
I love them, probably the most for the fact that, despite some repetitiveness, they know how to surprise, or rather, captivate with new music. I have a guilty pleasure – once every six months, I listen to Perpetuum Mobile again, but something tells me that this album will have its turn every six months too. By the way, when this album came out, I remembered Rudy Moser’s solo album, I think from 2008. There’s some really similar vibe between them.