Einstürzende Neubauten - Alexander Kluge

View transcript: Einstürzende Neubauten

Text: F.M. EINHEIT / EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN / One of the most successful German bands: Einstürzende Neubauten / Japan tour, collaboration with Heiner Müller, Sao Paulo etc. / F.M. Einheit: Band member, called “Mufti,” “Drum worker,” former ABWÄRTS member / Music magazine - -
Text: Einstürzende Neubauten
Text: Blixa Bargeld
Text: “Feed my Ego” / Yu Gong
Text: Einstürzende Neubauten
Text: “Feed my Ego” / Yu Gong
F. M. Einheit: “Neubauten” is somehow … the term “new construction” is a specifically German expression. It encompasses everything that has been built after World War II.
Alexander Kluge: Everything that isn’t an old building.
Einheit: Yes, exactly. And because we disagree with most of that, the phrase “Collapsing New Constructions” mean – also in regard to music, the American influence on German music …
Text: F.M. Einheit
Kluge: Those are new constructions too, so to speak …
Einheit: Exactly. We thought that would be the perfect name for what we are doing.
Kluge: We’ve heard a little bit …. the band used to be called “Abwärts” though, wasn’t it?
Einheit: “Abwärts” is a different band.
Kluge: A different band … but it still exists?
Einheit: It still exists, but I’m not part of it anymore.
Kluge: What was their specialty?
Einheit: It was closer to “Ton, Steine, Scherben,” with a much more explicitly political ambition than “Neubauten.”
Kluge: If we consider “Neubauten”‘s program: In what direction are they headed, how would you …
Einheit: Making space …
Kluge: … Making space …
Einheit: … basically. To erase everything that has been forced onto us. And then build something new from the ruins, practically invent our own language.
Text: “Making space - -”
Kluge: Just like the Colosseum was re-used when people collected the stones and built new palaces on top of the old structure …
Einheit: … yes, maybe …
Kluge: … or like an airstrike …?
Einheit: Well, I didn’t necessarily want to build a palace … but I also did not want to execute an airstrike.
Text: “Listening in pain”
Kluge: A convention center?
Einheit: Well, that one collapsed when came together as a band … the same day.
Kluge: Oh … so the one in Berlin is finished. It collapsed.
Einheit: The same day the band came into existence.
Text: “Junk is part of music”
Kluge: Some people say that’s where the name comes from.
Einheit: Well, it’s a nice story that you can twist any way you like … “Yes, sure, that’s why we picked this name.”
Text: Music for “Nathan the Wise” by F.M. Einheit
Kluge: You did “Nathan the Wise” in Kassel. Could you describe that to me: “Nathan the Wise,” what do I see here?
Einheit: Well, what I found interesting about it was … I have a strong antipathy against religion. And somehow, this was a way to engage with three different religions at the same time. I found that intriguing. Because firstly …
Kluge: It’s based on the play by Lessing.
Einheit: Yes, and the production sticks pretty closely to the text.
Kluge: What kind of play is that? What do we see? Nathan is a Jewish merchant. And then there is a Templar. He’s German, a little … of noble pedigree, from an Emperor’s dynasty.
Einheit: You could say that, yes…
Kluge: And he loves a young Jewess, whose life he saved.
Einheit: The main message of the play is really that Lessing says: Tolerance. Three different religions: Judaism, Christianity …
Kluge: … Saladin the Second, Islam…
Einheit: Yes. That they should really get along, that’s basically the main message of the play. And just as we were producing the play, the Golf War started. In that sense …
Kluge: Which involved three different armies as well. The Templar, that‘s Bush….
Einheit: Exactly.
Kluge: When I hear the song “Feed my Ego”, or “Yu Gong”…
Einheit: …“Yu Gong” is the title, but “Feed my Ego” is basically the central phrase in the song.
Kluge: … what kind of structure is behind it?
Einheit: In regard to technique?
Kluge: Yes. It’s impossible to understand the lyrics; if you hear it for the first time, you can only make out word fragments.
Einheit: Yes, but the song is really fragmented, for the biggest part. There are simply a few core phrases that are repeated over and over again.
Kluge: For example?
Einheit: “I am 12 meters tall,” “I am nine meters tall,” “Everything is unimaginable,” and “Feed my ego.” Well, and the structure? It’s based on this fable by Mao, about a people, a village, to be precise, which …
Kluge: … who always see this mountain …
Einheit: … yes, exactly, the village is behind the mountain, and they never see the sun. But by the sheer power of their will they manage to move the mountain, this handful of people.
Kluge: Yu Gong says that every shovel we take off the mountain makes the mountain smaller, but it won’t grow by itself, and I believe that is …
Einheit: Exactly.
Kluge: It’s ant theory; if you take away a few million shovels of material, the sun will shine through.
Einheit: And here, that is connected to excessive drug use. The song starts with what I would call the typical sound of a drug user …
Kluge: A drug …?
Einheit: A drug user … someone who takes drugs.
Kluge: User… yes…
Einheit: … let’s say a pot smoker, a cocaine sniffer, whatever. Somehow he’s got a razor blade and he hacks it against his mirror, his jug. And that’s basically the rhythm of the song. Speed-hacking, the entire time. It continues all the way through. That’s how it started, really …
Kluge: And if this group to the left – you don’t call them drummers, you say …?
Einheit: “Drum worker” is really the best way of putting it.
Kluge: And what are the two of you doing? Next to you, that is …?
Einheit: That‘s Andrew. Andrew is the one who invents all the instruments.
Kluge: They come from the dumpster, they are technical installations, found, made …
Einheit: Some are simply things he finds, and sometimes it’s that he imagines something very clearly, the kind of sound he wants, and then he builds something based on that. So he took two steel springs, and installed a pickup on it, and turned it into a kind of bass drum, the “big kick drum.” And the snare is simply a piece of metal. He mounted it to an iron window frame, and it’s a wonderful, practical travel percussion set.
Kluge: A travel percussion set?
Einheit: Yes…
Kluge: You can take it anywhere with you…
Einheit: … yes …
Kluge: … take it anywhere with you.
Einheit: Yes, and since we are on tour a lot, that’s really convenient. Because otherwise we’d have to go and find new instruments in every city – which we have to do to some extent anyway.
Kluge: And what do you do? What kind of devices to you have?
Einheit: That depends …
Kluge: Let’s say in this case, with “Yu Gong” …
Einheit: In this case I play the instrument that he built. And Andrew plays on an anvil.
Kluge: And what does Blixa Bargeld do?
Einheit: Blixa Bargeld…
Kluge: How does he morph the words? I mean, you can read it in a book, it is a text. But he does all kinds of things with the lyrics, with his throat, his voice …
Einheit: Well, every singer has his own way of phrasing, and Blixa has a very particular way of phrasing …
Kluge: Phrasing is a somewhat bold word choice; since you can understand only parts … you only get a sense of the lyrics.
Einheit: The lyrics are written exclusively by Blixa. But the music is a joint project through and through.
Kluge: Our cameraman observed you while you were hunting for sounds at Karstadt …
Text: How do you find sounds?
Einheit: Yeah, that was funny …
Kluge: Do you want to tell me about it?
Einheit: That was during …
Kluge: The summer sale …
Einheit: Yes, and at the time I was working with Wolf Sesemann, with whom I also did “Nathan,” on a play by Elfriede Jelinek, which is called “Illness or Modern Women.” And the text specifically asks for department store music. And I needed something that expressed hysteria and panic … and I thought, housewives during the summer sale is precisely the kind of hysteria that I need. And so we went and recorded that.
Kluge: What do you record there? You hold up a microphone …
Einheit: Hard to say, well, I …
Kluge: What kind of device is that?
Einheit: A portable DAT recorder …
Kluge: And you sneak up really closely, so to speak, behind the strips of cloth …
Einheit: I try to get as close as possible, but often …
Kluge: They are rummaging …
Einheit: Often you don’t know exactly what to expect; you need to keep an open mind and observe. And it’s really great when there are random idiotic announcements over the speakers, for example that a cashier should come somewhere … And right next to us was the coffee shop, and you hear coffee cups rattling the entire time. But you don’t know that in advance. I go, and I can only imagine a situation that might be interesting, and then I wait and see what happens.
Kluge: And in the ammunition factory, what kind of sounds did you find there? There are no people, after all, right? Not like here in the department store, where …
Einheit: It was crazy, perhaps I can … what happened there is still embedded in the walls.
Kluge: Frozen sounds …
Einheit: Yes, that’s one way to put it.
Kluge: In “Baron Munchhausen,” it’s like this: Because it is so cold in Russia, the sound of the postal hornist freezes inside the horn. They are frozen sounds. And that’s what happens here: the noise of war is stuck in the ammunition, in the scrap metal.
Einheit: Yes, the atmosphere alone, you are somehow, everyone … it’s a pretty large complex, where people actually still live, they simply built houses on top of the bunkers. I find that incredible, to think that people raise children there, for example. Because I’ve seen children who live there. And the entire atmosphere, the things that happened there, it’s still in there. What I played on was simply the remains of some kind of machinery that was still standing around. But even just being there really shook me up.
Text: Searching for sounds on the areal of the former ammunition factory Hirschhagen –
Kluge: Could you explain the connection? Yu Gong is a fairy tale about the collective, after all – how people come together to take down and move it a mountain. “Feed my Ego” on the other hand is about individualism. But for you, the two things coexist. Two fragments next to each other.
Einheit: Yes, very much so.
Kluge: The soul agrees with both.
Einheit: I think every band member would tell you something completely different. It really varies a lot.
Einheit: First of all, you collect a lot of material. It took an entire day to record the blades alone – which really provide the basic rhythm of the song, and the steel springs and the piece of metal are layered over them as drums. We tried all kinds of things; a blade on a toilet lid, a blade on a water glass, a blade on a cassette tape; a blade that hacks, a blade that glides over a surface … then we took a few hours to pick the best takes, eventually ended up with four or five, and we used those to piece the rhythm together. We sample them, that means, you take a bit of the sound, store it digitally, and then you can use the computer to select and play it.
Kluge: Do you play everything live? Is it new every time, or do you record it?
Einheit: I think it would be impossible to hack a razor blade for ten minutes at the same constant speed.
Kluge: So you record it?
Einheit: We record it; and we play the recording during the live performance. For some songs we have backing tapes. In this case, that’s the blades, for example. And at the end of the song we need a finale … and you can transpose it, you can twist it, you can run it through effect devices, you can bend it, dent it; and that is on the backing tape, too, because it’s difficult to do it live. It would also look very boring, because you’d have to do it with a keyboard. And keyboards live would not be very sexy.
Kluge: And “dented sounds,” that is a proper term?
Einheit: Yes, “dented sounds”, that’s a good expression, I like it …
Kluge: And now we have a stream of junk, it flows along, and floating along in it are words, signs, moments, eclectic sounds.
Einheit: Exactly. There are layers. You have a 24-track tape. Used to be, when people worked with 8-track tapes, you had to … that was fun, if someone wanted two tracks, you had to work really hard to get those layers onto the tape. With 24 tracks, it’s a bit easier. And in the end you arrange the piece. First you create an atmosphere, or a stream, as you called it. The lyrics are almost always added at the very end. And finally, after the lyrics are done, we arrange the song.
Kluge: Keyword finale. What do you do to introduce a finale?
Einheit: In this case we did it with the orchestra. The lyrics float into the night, something that is close to the experience of a drug user, and then the orchestra fragments start, they overtake each other and multiply, more and more layers on top of each other.
Kluge: What are you doing in that moment, where you are sitting to the left, the two “workers”?
Einheit: In the end, the dynamic simply increases. You have to hold against the orchestra and play louder.
Kluge: And Bargeld, what is he doing?
Einheit: Bargeld? Screams his lungs out, as he is supposed to.
Kluge: He is increasing as well.
Kluge: By now you are fairly diversified and well-known all over the world. Sao Paulo is not a foreign city for you, we have spoken about Japan. There is vivid activity worldwide.
Einheit: That’s something we were practically forced to do, because in the beginning it was really, really difficult for us to get a record contract in Germany, or even just to perform in Germany.
Kluge: I rarely see you on public television either, I should add. Do you ever make appearances?
Einheit: We show up in “Aspekte” on occasion.
Kluge: But they are only talking about you in the culture program. You don’t appear as …
Einheit: Not as prime time entertainment, no. That is much more likely to happen on stage. And that’s why we had to take the detour via England, for example. We got a record contract there, and people wrote about it, and only after we found some recognition there, we could play in Germany again. Wider acceptance in Germany really only came after we did “Andi,” when suddenly the culture mags and arts sections thought they had discovered us, even though the band had already been around for six years. Only then did we gain a somewhat greater popularity so that we were actually able to make a living.
Kluge: And that was the moment when you started doing theater.
Einheit: It was a time when we almost disbanded. And then there was suddenly a new enemy to butt up against - that was awesome, of course. We didn’t have to bash each other, we could now bash Zadek, it was great.
Kluge: But it’s a strange development, isn’t it? In the beginning, you were sort of part of the underground, after all. And now you are suddenly taking over the state theaters. Including a collaboration with Heiner Müller, who was still with the “Academy of the Arts” back then, shortly before its dissolution. And you take that very seriously. Art is not something that makes you immediately want to do anti-art. Is that correct?
Einheit: That’s correct. I’ve always been interested in theater. I actually wanted to become an actor. But I didn’t get accepted at drama school, so I became a musician.
Kluge: You don’t sing.
Einheit: Rarely.
Kluge: Opera, is that something you …?
Einheit: I am feeling my way into that right now.
Kluge: So if they weren’t singing, you’d like it.
Einheit: It would definitely help.
Kluge: But the extreme forms of theater, so to speak. Opera is non-realistic drama, after all – it makes all the shrill noises possible, but also quiet noises, overtones, all the sounds which in drama are always somewhat suppressed by realism. That’s something you’d be into?
Text: F.M. Einheit
Einheit: Yes, that’s definitely something I’d be interested in. At the moment I’m simply learning to deal with that kind of thing in theater. It’s a learning curve. When we started, we worked pretty consciously in a pop environment. We always rejected people’s assumptions that we are an avant-garde band, because that simply meant putting us into a certain corner. Okay, they are the artists, you don’t need to take them seriously, they don’t have anything to say. That’s why in the beginning we decided to work in a pop environment and play on rock stages. But now people are starting to think we are a rock band. So it’s time to distance ourselves from that and go in a different direction.
Kluge: Like partisans. You cannot let yourself be defined.
Einheit: Definitely not.
Kluge: If you take the “Neubauten” and look at the environment they work in. What kind of relationships exist, what other bands are there? “The Bad Seeds” for example, how do they relate to the “Einstürzenden Neubauten”?
Einheit: It’s all pretty connected.
Kluge: They are relatives. It’s one clan.
Einheit: Yes, like a clan, that’s one way to put it. Sometimes people from other bands also do lighting for us or sound. There’s “Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds,” where Blixa is a member. Then there‘s “Crime & The City Solution” – Nick Cave, they are Australians for the most part, and the same with “Crime & The City Solution.” Our guitarist plays for them. Who else? There’s the “Rainbirds” …
Kluge: You play for them?
Einheit: They play for me. The stage music CD I made, I presented it live, and the two girls played there too. Who else? There’s a producer from Berlin, Voov, with whom I work a lot.
Kluge: What’s his name?
Einheit: Voov.
Kluge: Voov. Voov of Freibank.
Einheit: Freibank is the record label that our bass player runs. At some point we got tired of paying money to the GEMA, and found ways to keep more money for ourselves.
Kluge: How do you do that?
Einheit: Of every record sold, the GEMA takes about one Mark. Then they keep it for a year, put it into an account, let it grow. Then they keep about 20 or 15 percent in administration fees, and then it goes to the record labels, and they keep it for another year, and then eventually it goes to the artist.
Kluge: And what are you doing?
Einheit: We do it like this: The labels have to pay money to the GEMA. And we take it directly from the record labels. We don’t need the GEMA for that, and we save a lot of money.
Text: Katharina Franck, Rainbirds
Text: Educacao
Text: Einstürzende Neubauten
Text: Klang Art Festival Osnabrück
Kluge: How did you get your name, F.M. Einheit?
Einheit: For one thing, when I first started making music, the only instrument I had was a short-wave receiver. And FM means Frequency Modulation, which is the American expression for “UKW,” so it really refers to radio. At the same time, they are the initials of my first and middle name: Frank Martin.
Kluge: And “Einheit”?
Einheit: Firstly, “Einheit” is a unit, a radio unit …
Kluge: One unit … But not the German reunification?
Einheit: That got in the way, unfortunately. The German reunification ruined my good name.
Kluge: But the name existed before the event.
Einheit: It has to do with the fact that I have a very harmonizing effect in bands and manage to keep people together, more or less. It’s got something to do with that. It’s a radio unit, for once, and the mother hen sitting in the middle.
Kluge: The peacemaker.
Kluge: Blixa Bargeld, how did he get his name?
Einheit: Well, Baargeld was a Dadaist. And Blixa is a ballpoint pen brand.
Kluge: And he combined those things, like a declaration.
Einheit: Yeah, well, Baargeld probably would have been into that.
Kluge: And Alexander von Borsig? Why does he go by Borsig?
Einheit: Because his father worked at the Borsig factory. Even though his actual name is much nicer. He’s actually called Alexander Hacke. And now he only goes by Hacke.
Kluge: I see a woman with you who sings in Portuguese. Who is that?
Einheit: That’s Katharina Franck from the “Rainbirds.” How did that happen, good question. There is another band I play in …
Kluge: But she speaks Portuguese fluently. She knows the language.
Einheit: She grew up in Portugal. She is German, but grew up in Lisbon.
Kluge: What does she sing about?
Einheit: It’s a funny little story about people with good manners. The day she sang that song, she had to perform at the International Radio Show, and she was terribly annoyed by all the TV boys and the pop stars, and that’s what the text is about, that she doesn’t like that, and that she really only likes bees, wolves, and nice young men.
Kluge: Bees, wolves, and nice young men …. that’s what she is talking about.
Einheit: That’s the story behind the song.
Kluge: What does an average day look like, for example today?
Einheit: Today started out a bit frustrating, actually. Yesterday I was in Cologne at a music fair …
Kluge: Do you get up early, do you get up late?
Einheit: Today I had to get up really early, I got up at seven. Because I thought I had to be at a dry tech rehearsal in Bonn by ten. The tech rehearsal is in Bonn, where I’m doing Aeschylus’ “The Persians.” The rehearsals are just starting, there’s a tech rehearsal, I haven’t talked that much to the director yet. That’s what I wanted to do today.
Kluge: There will be music again.
Einheit: There will be music again.
Kluge: As accompaniment.
Einheit: Well, this time I’d actually like the actors to make the music themselves.
Kluge: You only give the instructions?
Einheit: Well, I’ll still record a few things.
Kluge: So just like Beethoven made the music for Goethe’s “Egmont,” the “Einstürzenden Neubauten” work with these stage plays and equip them with music.
Einheit: Yes. It’s about time, I think.
Kluge: It’s about time.
Einheit: So I got there at nine, but the rehearsal plan said that the dry tech is not until two. And since we had agreed to meet at four already, unfortunately I had to skip it. Then I went to the airport. I had to wait a few hours, first I bought a few records. Then I took the flight to Munich, got into a cab, and arrived here. And since then we’ve been talking.
Kluge: Different random sample. The day before yesterday, what happened then?
Einheit: The day before yesterday I was home, in my studio, looking at material that Walter recorded, and I started to work on the concert at the poison gas factory. First I copied the entire sound. Then I started to select certain parts and turn them into samples. Making samples means to record different parts and to save them in digital form so that you can keep calling them up, keep denting them.
Kluge: What kind of poison gas factory is that?
Einheit: It’s in Hirschhagen near Kassel. Walter showed it to me, he’s been there a few times. It’s a huge complex, like a small settlement.
Kluge: It’s from World War II, right?
Einheit: Yes.
Kluge: I believe we were fully prepared for gas warfare.
Einheit: The Germans have always been good at poison gas attacks, I’ve got to say.
Kluge: But it’s impressive that World War II didn’t involve any gas.
Einheit: Truly amazing. But at least in Indochina it worked pretty well, didn’t it?
Kluge: And what do you see in a poison gas factory?
Einheit: Most of it has been covered up, but the foundations are still standing, people simply built houses on top of the bunkers. And a few of the bunkers are still intact. Everything has been torn out, but the bunkers still exist. It was really inspiring to make music there. To be confronted with that. So I started to work with this material in the studio. What else did I do? I realized that I hadn’t booked a flight for the next day. So I had to get up early again to catch a flight. In between, I spent some time playing with my daughter.
Kluge: How old is she?
Einheit: She is five.
Kluge: And how old are you?
Einheit: I am 32.
Kluge: 32 years old. And born where?
Einheit: In Dortmund.
Kluge: Could you describe that a little? Born in Dortmund …
Einheit: Born in Dortmund, grew up in Bochum, one of eight children. My father was an architect …
Kluge: How did you get into music?
Einheit: I got into music because I couldn’t become an actor. Because drama school didn’t want me … I had made music before, of course. I was always interested in music. But originally, my plan was to go to drama school and become an actor.
Kluge: You spent time roaming the theaters.
Einheit: I went to see a lot of plays during that time.
Kluge: But how exactly did you get into music?
Einheit: I tried to find a form that combined theater and music. After drama school didn’t work out, I had to find something else. I tried to write a play that works with music. It was a nice idea, but at the time I did not know enough, and it simply didn’t work. And then Punk happened, and I started to make Punk music.
Kluge: How did you meet the others from the “Einstürzenden Neubauten”? How does a group like that come together?
Einheit: I don’t think you can search for people, you simply meet them.
Kluge: And how did you meet them? Especially since you are now keeping the entire band together.
Text: F.M. Einheit
Einheit: I only joined the band a year later. I met them in Hamburg. They came from Berlin, the “Neubauten.” At the time I was working at concert events. And that’s how I got to see them. Really impressive, really impressive concert. I wrote about it in a music magazine. And we ended up talking for nights, and suddenly I was a member of the band.
Text: ABWÄRTS (1980)
Band member: The only fear he has is to be replaced by a rhythm device. Every night he screams at some point, really loudly: No! Not the rhythm device!
Text: F.M. Einheit
Text: ABWÄRTS (1980)
Text: “Stalingrad“
Text: F.M. Einheit / EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN / “Making noise until it turns into music - -“