Koncert Einstürzende Neubaten

Einstürzende Neubauten: Alles in Allem  & Tour 2021

Einstürzende Neubauten released a new album for the band’s 40th anniversary in 2020: Alles in Allem is a compilation of 10 songs often concerned with the exploration of “Berlin” as a thematic topos. The criteria first emerged as part of the process. So Blixa Bargeld wandered through memories, dreams, montaged fragments – and yet, in this elusive city, it is always about the present. 

The unique sound and textual landscapes of the band, founded in 1980 in Berlin, reveal the timelessness that Blixa Bargeld, N. U. Unruh, Alexander Hacke, Jochen Arbeit and Rudolph Moser have continuously maintained. And yet, through experimental approaches to songwriting, instruments developed over four decades and collective input, the band sounds remarkably cutting edge within its own time. In fact, through its individual brand of music the Einstürzende Neubauten seem to always command each and every manifestation of the here and now – whether in its early years or its more considered later work.

The very first song, “Ten Grand Goldie,” exemplies the innovativeness inherent in the Neubauten’s work. It resulted from a cooperation with the band’s worldwide individual supporters, the fan cult community which has supported the group’s independence through alternative financing since 2002, long before such crowdfunding models became popular. The supporters, organized through the Neubauten forum at neubauten.org, which is also an archive of the band’s extensive body of work, were involved again and again, had regular access to work on the album. They were encouraged to participate in the creative process by contributing fragments to the later song text lyrics. So they not only enabled this extraordinary group to carry out its groundbreaking work but were able to take part in the creative process of their favorite band.

Conditions have changed again due to the new approaches and are transformed into audible features in the songs. Free association plays a role in most of the songs, seldom is there a clear intention, and interpretation is left up to the listeners either way, there is no clear message as the writing is frequently based on dreams or left to chance. One of the webcasts documents is the initial source for Alles in Allem, which gave the album its title. After walking along a corridor outside the studio Bargeld described associations that the patterns in the chipped flooring awoke in him. And that’s how a “verkürztes Krokodil” (a truncated crocodile) and “Plasmazellen ohne Kern” (plasma cells without a nucleus) found their way into the song.

And even though “Am Landwehrkanal” – has an unusually swaying sound for the Neubauten – the verse “Wir hatten tausend Ideen / Und alle waren gut” (We had a thousand ideas / And all of them were good) could easily be perceived as the band’s description of itself. The sum total is a special compilation: Alles in Allem, Einstürzende Neubauten’s first regular studio album in 12 years, presents an incomparable band that defies categorization to create a genre all its own.

With its new songs and the band’s extensive back catalogue Einstürzende Neubauten wanted to tour Germany and internationally in 2020 to celebrate their remarkable anniversary, what unfortunately became impossible due to the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic. Most of the concert dates could be postponed to 2021 and band will be touring as soon as such events are possible again. Detailed information can be found on the website: www.neubauten.org.