Molecules

The 'bauten subdue noise and chaos for their own nefarious means with their fourth album, 'Five On the Open Ended Richter Scale'. This title would even seem to imply a compromise/progression on the part of its creators; with 0 on the scale being the naked racket of their debut Kollaps (appreciated by the minority) and 9 being an attempt to make their shockwaves felt by a larger audience.

So everything you have come to expect from our industrial fetishists but with an unprecedented, rough and metallic musicality - at least on the first side, which is more rhythmic. 'Morning Dew' reeks of Bad Seeds cactus sweat and constitutes one of Bargeld's greatest moments as singer. The bass dirge and lush strings (!) of track 1 are a noteable exception for this half of the album (which but for its subtle variations might have fallen into cliché) and it heralds more to come; for side 2 is a far more intriguing proposition...


From '12 Städte' to 'Adler kommt später' there is little accentuating percussion to break the esoteric malevolence of creaking doors, moaning two-note feedback guitar, unravelling masking tape (my interpretation), dissonant flutes that conjure endless snow drifts and nomadic peoples...
We are lost. But wait...

The echo-chamber plucking of a solitary string on an unidentifiable instrument leads us by the hand to shelter. An ice cave, walls inscribed with mysterious glyphs and symbols - suddenly Einstürzende Neubauten's logo makes sense. After all, what are this band if not primitivist?
Suddenly: torrents of scrap blows, struck and struck in reverse, a mounting, undulating cacophony that recedes, slinking back into the cave... a timely reminder to the listener of the landscape from which Neubauten and their music originates.

The closing track resigns, shambolically, to the mechanical slavery which Bargeld & co. attempt to subvert. This time they failed perhaps, but we got a glimpse of that mystical driving force behind the artists.
'Dark ambient', they call it. Touched upon in 1983's Zeichnungen des Patienten O. T. most effectively (albeit in the grip of paranoia and, without doubt, heroin), it is a handy term to describe Neubauten's most beautiful passages, for there is beauty to be found. And it is these elements of Fünf... that mark it as an album worth hearing. For me they recalled the Residents' greatest achievement 'Eskimo' whilst providing an alternative to the contemporaraneous trends of 'ethereal' darkwave, some of which was, let's face it, kinda cheesy. I am eager to be proven wrong in this opinion.

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