I bought a ticket for
this show a month before I moved to Berlin because I knew this was
something I did not want to miss. The opportunity to see such a
quintessential Berlin band in their hometown was irresistible.
Artist: Einstürzende
Neubauten
Venue: Columbiahalle
Location: Berlin, Germany
Date: 14 November 2017
Setlist:
01. The Garden
01. The Garden
02. Haus der Lüge
03. Nagorny Karabach
04. Dead Friends
(Around the Corner)
05. Unvollständigkeit
06. Youme & Meyou
07. Die Befindlichkeit
des Landes
08. Sonnenbarke
09. Halber Mensch
[partial] → Von wegen
10. Sabrina
11. Susej
12. How Did I Die?
First Encore:
13. Silence Is Sexy
14. Let's Do It a Dada
15. Total Eclipse of
the Sun
Second Encore:
16. Salamandrina
17. Redukt
The band came to the
stage without percussionist Rudolf Moser or guitarist Jochen Arbeit
for the performance of "The Garden". Although I like the
song, I found the live performance to be a bit dull. I was concerned
that the show might be a dud, but the rest of the band came out for
an explosive "Haus der Lüge" and convinced me that they
still had something in them. Most of the rest of the show was
somewhere in between those two extremes, combining conventional
beauty and restraint with chaotic energy and noise.
Seeing the band live,
it becomes apparent that bassist Alexander Hacke is the underpinning
of the band. His bass dominated the mix and was the foundation upon
which most songs were built. The self-made percussion was also
critical (and a delight to behold in person), but I was surprised by
how many songs had backing tracks presumably controlled by touring
keyboardist Felix Gebhard. Blixa Bargeld even commented while
lighting an "herbal cigarette" for the introduction of
"Silence of Sexy" that "man darf nicht alles glauben,
was man hört" ("one shouldn't believe everything that one
hears"). There's an irony to me that a band so focused on
customized instrumentation and experimentation would still use
synthesized accompaniment. Despite such assistance, the band was
occasionally a bit loose. I don't expect perfection, but the lack of
precision was disappointing.
I was also a bit
surprised that Arbeit's guitar was pushed back in the mix. The guitar
was rarely the centerpiece; it was rather a textural element, often
played with an ebow to sound entirely unlike a guitar. It was amusing
as well that unlike most rock bands, the guitarist and bassist never
swapped out their instruments, but the two percussionists were
constantly changing and adjusting their collection of tools. The
band's large array of pipes, machinery, metal sheets, bars, springs,
gears, and contraptions remains their greatest novelty and
contributes substantially to the visual experience (to say nothing of
the auditory experience!).
The setlist relied
heavily on Silence Is Sexy
(2000) and Alles wieder offen
(2007), closely matching the material on their new Greatest
Hits collection. That set oddly
features only one song from Haus der Lüge
(1989) and nothing whatsoever from the eight years and four albums
preceding that. (It also only features "The Garden" from
Ende Neu (1996) and
"How Did I Die?" from their latest album, Lament
(2014).) The setlist was similarly biased, although they did a short
version of "Halber Mensch" as an introduction to "Von
wegen", which itself concluded
(as in the studio recording)
with a short quotation from "Sehnsucht" off their first
studio album, Kollaps
(1981).
"Unvollständigkeit"
was perhaps the only song they played that didn't entirely work; it
felt a bit lethargic and restrained. "Let's Do It a Dada",
on the other hand, was a total success, despite the recorded version
having limited replayability.
But where was the rest of Ende Neu
and Perpetuum Mobile?
"Was ist ist", "Ein
seltener Vogel",
or "Selbsportrait
mit Kater" would've been
great. And while "Salamandrina" was excellent, where was
what I take to be
their best song, "Die Interimsliebenden"? (However,
I know from recordings that the live arrangement sounds like half the
song is missing.)
I
like just about all the songs they played, but most lacked
the intensity that dominated their 80s output. Even the experimental
aspects of their 90s albums were missing. I can appreciate that
they've grown and developed into yet another phase, but I still
wonder where they might go from here. When I reviewed Lament,
I had hoped that after seven years of little activity, they might
enter a fourth stage of their creative life. However, now they are
still playing the same set of 00s material and are barely
acknowledging Lament.
The setlist had no surprises nor any hints of the "Rampe"
improvisations that once were a hallmark of their shows. Nonetheless,
Neubauten still manage to
fascinate me with almost everything they do, so I still harbor hope
that they have more creativity left in them yet.
One more note: the band
maintained their usual tradition of selling USB sticks after the show
containing the complete concert. I found 25€ a bit expensive but
still couldn't resist. However, when I got home and gave it a closer
look and listen, I discovered that the audio was a mere 256 kbps mp3
file. The spectrogram is loud and appears overdriven and compressed.
Clipping can be heard throughout the show, particularly during "The
Garden". "How Did I Die?" even has skips in it. If you
can ignore those faults, it's a fair record of the show. But without
editing or the visual element, it sounds more like a bootleg than a
professional job. I'm used to that level of quality, but at that
price, I expect better. It's cool to have as a record of the show I
saw, but as an independent live album, it's not particularly strong.
Scores:
The concert: B
The recording: C-
P.S. A recent concert
at the new Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg can be seen on YouTube here.
It's a slightly stronger set than what I saw and you can see all of
the percussive creations in their full glory. The audio gets oddly
terrible in the last song ("Redukt"), but otherwise it's
quite well done.
