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Einstürzende Neubauten, "Silence is Sexy"
At one time, it would have been unthinkable for a band renowned for their unrelenting volume, chaos and atonality to release an album with this title. However, Neubauten's modus operandi has always been to confound expectations and even after a decade of softening their sound, Silence is Sexy certainly confounded many listeners at the time. Looking back at it now, it is easy to look at it as the start of a new phase in the group’s development. It has certainly lost little of its potency in the last ten years.
From the moment "Sabrina" begins, Silence is Sexy casts its spell on me. Blixa Bargeld’s lyrics cycle through the colors of the German flag and the rest of the band keep a tight rein on the volume; exploring the texture and melodic capabilities of their chosen instruments. These themes run through Silence is Sexy in various forms, creating a solid conceptual backbone for the album. This was the sound of a new Neubauten (Jochen Arbeit and Rudolf Moser both had joined since Ende Neu) and represented a testing of the waters for the various players.
Later in the album, the superb "Die Befindlichkeit des Landes" sees Bargeld ruminating on the state of post-unification Germany, particularly the sense of displacement caused by new construction and the downplaying of history (the name chosen by the band way back in 1980 having a different resonance at the turn of the millennium). He plays on the irony of perhaps Germany’s most famous singer, Marlene Dietrich, commemorated by a tiny square in the Potsdamer area of Berlin. The idea of a new state brought about by the joining of two separate halfs of a city could be seen as a metaphor for the loss of the band’s past (through the loss of F.M. Einheit and Mark Chung) and looking to the future, the what ifs of the latest line up of the group.
The idea of silence and restraint also comes to a head at several points throughout the album. The title track deals with John Cage’s idea of the impossibility of silence all limited to the time it takes to smoke a cigarette. Pregnant pauses and a loping bass line give way to Jochen Arbeit’s "tinnitus guitar" which reinforces Cage’s epiphany in an anechoic chamber that no matter how quiet the environment becomes, some sort of sound will always pervade. Interestingly, the old cliché of the notes they are not playing being important; "Silence is Sexy" was built around Bargeld’s piano but the instrument was edited out in its final presentation.
Towards the end of the album, one of Neubauten’s best songs emerge in the form of "Sonnenbarke." The song is a stunning voyage on a mythical sun barge, full of cosmic splendor. With alchemical grace, Bargeld transforms the November grey of Berlin into a creative journey through a golden, eternal light. The power of the lyrics resonates into the music where Moser’s use of a jet engine as percussive instrument creates a shining, shimmering constellation of tones (and of course the idea of voyage across the sky is semantically linked to the jet engine itself).
This reissue of Silence is Sexy makes some alterations to the format and tracklisting of the album. Firstly, the second disc featuring "Pelikanol" is completely absent leaving Silence is Sexy as a single disc album. Secondly, the main disc follows the original German tracklisting of the album, which replaces "Total Eclipse of the Sun" with "Anrufe in Abwesenheit." Personally, I always preferred the latter to the former (which was available on the international edition of Strategies Against Architecture III) as it fit better with the concepts and music found elsewhere on Silence is Sexy. So for anyone who already owns the album, there is little here to warrant buying it again (unless you want a set of Neubauten branded matches, which are given as a bonus when buying from the band’s website) but for those who have yet to sample this entry in Neubauten’s back catalogue, I heartily recommend it but would suggest tracking down the older two-disc version instead for the definitive experience.
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