Einsturzende Neubauten: Blixa Bargeld (vocals, guitar, slide guitar, piano, Hammond organ); Meret Becker, Jennifer Levy (vocals); Alex Hacke (guitar, bass); Roland Wolf (Hammond organ, bass); Raoul Walton (bass); Andrew Chuddy (percussion).
Producers: Einsturzende Neubauten, Jon Caffery.
Recorded at Akademie der Kunste in Berlin; Conny's Studio, Germany; La Chapelle, Belgium between February 1994 and May 1996.
Includes liner notes by Biba Kopf.
EinstĀrzende Neubauten: F.M. Einheit, Alexander Hacke, N.U. Unruh, Blixa Bargeld.
By the close of the 1980s, industrial music heavyweights Einsturzende Neubauten had effectively demolished the boundaries separating rock music and auto-destructive art. While the band's power machinery-wielding approach could at times wrest scrap-metal symphonies of sublime beauty, more often the results played like a bleak, uber-realist commentary on the decline of modern civilization. But a dramatically different, creatively refreshed version of the band appeared on EN's 1996 effort, ENDE NEU. With a title that playfully references the band's name while translating from the German to "ending new," the album closes the chapter on EN's early, destructive phase, and hones their avant-garde tendencies to complement comparatively conventional songwriting. Perhaps a residual effect of his tenure with brooding Australian rockers Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, EN front man Blixa Bargeld's vocals are in surprisingly cabaret-like form on the Brechtian "The Garden" and the exquisite strings-accompanied duet with actress Meret Becker, "Stella Maris."
Professional Reviews
Q (10/96, p.163) - 3 Stars - Good - "...ENDE NEU hits an altogether more reflective, ambient and plangent groove....their studiedly arthouse manner is offset by a streak of humour and a taste for oddly compelling melodies....Neubauten refine the profile of industrial music with a human face."
The Wire (4/00, p.44) - "...The surviving trio of Berliners turned inwards for [this] reflective album....opening with a fine barricade commentary and closes with the Kafka-inspired dronework....dreamy surrealism....containing the essential 'NNNAAAMMM'..."
Melody Maker (9/14/96, p.51) - "You should try them with a pinch salt....as long as you overlook the sleevenotes detailing the meaning and methodologies of the tracks, ENDE NEU is, for the most part, a fantastic album, an album that for all its fixation on procedure, still manages to thrill, to make the heart race..."
