George Starostin's Reviews

EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN

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Introduction

Steve Potocin <epoggi@cox.net> (14.12.2002)

Any short comments? No . A short question. What the hell is Einsturzende Neubauten? Sounds like something I ordered at our local German tavern!

[Good question. It means "Collapsing New Buildings". Next time you order it at your local German tavern, there's gonna be trouble ahead - G.S.]

Adam Holman <mirwais_fan@hotmail.com> (04.01.2006)

General comment for Einsturzende Neubauten:

I'm a rather big Einsturzende Neubauten fan and own all their albums, so I thought I could provide my thoughts on the band. I do find their 'noisy' first few albums a bit tiring, but throughout their career they've progressively gotten less and less industrial, and started making actual music with real instruments (this might be due to the influence of Nick Cave on Blixa, or old age or something).

Because of this, their albums from the 1990's onwards are without doubt my favourite: Tabula Rasa (1993), Ende Neu (1996), Silence is Sexy (2000) and Perpetuum Mobile (2004). In these albums, especially the last three, they concentrate on songwriting rather than just making strange noises, and generally fill the songs with guitar, bass, keyboards etc, and use the percussion just as a backing. I think this progression was caused by percussionist FM Einheit leaving the band early during recording for Ende Neu, which had very much the same affect as John Cale leaving The Velvet Underground. I'd also recommend their 2000 live album in Brussels, as it has some re-arrangements of songs from Ende Neu (and older albums) which work much better than the originals.

I thought I'd mention this because these are the albums you haven't reviewed yet, and in my opinion by this time they were a completely different (and much more listenable) band.


STRATEGIES AGAINST ARCHITECTURE

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HALBER MENSCH

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FIVE ON THE OPEN-ENDED RICHTER SCALE

Andy Schuster <JSchusterElektro@aol.com> (25.08.2003)

This album is mainstream. What a disappointment. Only "Kein Bestandteil sein" rules. It´s dark and aggressive and wants to kill you.


HAUS DER LÜGE

Andy Schuster <JSchusterElektro@aol.com> (25.08.2003)

Funny enough this highly industrial album was the best selling EN-album. What a success for 1988, the year that pop music died again (Stick, Aitken Waterman and the likes). Not one single made it to the Television (until 1992 with "Interimsliebende"), but everybody remembers the splendid concerts from that time. A German TV-station even managed to record that sound massacre as a passable live tape, which was never released on vinyl, though. "Haus der Lüge" is majestic, "Prolog" is like a painful hiccup. What a precious record. Side B is rather boring. So is Sonic Youth sometimes. I don´t like the VU-comparison. Sister Ray can't be found on any EN-album. Reviewers seem to find the VU just everywhere. You can find it among my vinyls. Old and withered. Oh yes, Fiat Lux might sound like "The Diamond Sea" (Sonic Youth), then again, it might not...


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