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Einstürzende Neubauten, "Perpetuum Mobile"
Whoever considers Einstürzende Neubauten's musical output from the 1990s to be lackluster has got to be tone deaf. The group opened the decade with a forceful sound that began to integrate their noise tendencies with clever musical arrangement and song craftsmanship. Haus der Lüge—although released in 1989—started the phase off, paving the way for 1993's Tabula Rasa, which was a complete breakthrough marrying elegance, sound exploration, composition, and noise.
I'm even finding myself going back to Ende Neu and Silence is Sexy, rediscovering things I might not have fully appreciated at the time of their release, as I will probably do with their new album. With Perpetuum Mobile, the group has made their transition even further away from the post-techno stronghold, with no songs that sound like post-post-industrial Deutche-chants. Without the sing-alongs to latch on to, it makes it a more difficult album to get into from the get-go, however, the atypical instrumentation, ace production, and Blixa's peculiar lyrics and subjects are enticing enough to always want more deeper listens. "Perpetuum Mobile" is the rather jaded perspective of the world by a person who is constantly on the move: with false amenities and the ugliness of reality, while on "Selbstportrait mit Kater," Bliza admits repeatedly "Life on other planets is difficult!" Einstürzende Neubauten has always struck me as a group who's very generous to their listeners: the lavish packages that accompany their standard releases are far more intense than nearly anything else obtainable at regular prices. The music is undoubtedly worked and reworked exhaustively, leaving the lyrics and melodies intact while restructuring everything else to the point of bearing almost completely no resemblance to conventional pop/rock/electronic/whatever songs. Friendly, relatively quiet tunes like the album's bookends "Ich Gehe Jetzt" and "Grunstück" are not foreign for the group, almost meant to leave pleasant impressions while the group pushes the boundaries with songs like the title track, where, for nearly 14 minutes, the underscoring melody rarely moves from the same note (the colorful percussion, lyrics, and samples make the song far less boring than it sounds). Elsewhere, familiar Neubautenisms can be found: homemade percussive instruments lie alongside bossy bass guitar and faint, squealing guitar lines and double-tracked vocals. A DVD is included for a limited time in some of the releases, but it's an audio-only supplement of 5.1 surround mixed versions of only four of the songs on the album. As always, I anxiously await the next Neubauten tour.
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