Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Einstürzende Neubauten’ Category

Einstürzende Neubauten: The Year of the Rat Tour (Union Transfer, Philadelphia, PA, October 31, 2020) [CANCELLED]

Posted in 2manydjs, Cancelled, Coronavirus, Einstürzende Neubauten, Philadelphia, PA, Quarantine, Union Transfer on October 31, 2020| Leave a Comment »

[CANCELLED: October 31, 2020] Einstürzende Neubauten

indexEinstürzende Neubauten are infamous–they have been making noise (their name means collapsing new buildings) for forty years.

It never even occurred to me that you might be able to see them live.  Apparently,

The last time the Berlin-based band attempted a tour across the Atlantic was back in 2010.

Unfortunately, Blixa Bargeld and Co experienced heavy losses when their ten date 30th-anniversary tour of the US was held up by bureaucratic red tape.

Neubauten had two cancel the tour just two days before the first gig at the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles, at the time stating:

“While the US Department of Homeland Security did issue approvals for the band’s visas, it was not done in time to secure the appointments at the overseas embassies and consulates that represent the necessary final step in the process.”

Their earliest music was largely noise and mechanical sounds. They have morphed over the years (Blixa Bargeld played with Nick Cave for many years).

What began in 1980 in the Berlin Wall City in impetuous noise constructions went through countless metamorphoses and can still be called the avant-garde today. To avoid the impressive work outstripping the band, Blixa Bargeld, NU Unruh, Alexander Hacke, Jochen Arbeit and Rudolf Moser always set new artistic goals.

I wonder who was going to open for them.

I would really enjoy seeing them live. However, I would never be going to a show on Halloween night–I have kids after all.

It’s a shame that this whole tour was cancelled–I would imagine they would never try coming back to the States. But if they do, I will certainly try to get there.

eineilish

 

 

Read Full Post »

C!rca: Wunderkammer (RVCC Arts, Branchburg NJ, March 16, 2013)

Posted in Acrobats, Barry Adamson, Branchburg, NJ, C!rca: Wunderkammer, DJ Yoda, Einstürzende Neubauten, Jeri Southern, Kate Bush, Laibach, RVCC Arts, Set in New Jersey!, Susanna And The Magical Orchestra on March 23, 2013| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: March 16, 2013] C!rca: Wunderkammer

circa1 As part of our theater-going experience, I bought Sarah and I tickets to C!rca’s Wonderkammer show.  I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect (but we’ve has such good luck with shows that we didn’t know anything about that  I wasn’t worried).  The blurb about C!rca reads:

In this exquisite cabaret of the senses, a diva melts into a rope, balloons and bubble wrap discover their artistic souls while bodies twist and fly.  Seven performers of unbelievable ability bend the very fabric of reality.  Sexy, funny and explosive, Circa presents a breathless cocktail of new circus, cabaret and vaudeville.  Control and abandon, skill and humour, lyricism and anarchy all meld into a sinuous fugue of profound beauty.

So, you sort of think you know what you’re going to get, but in many ways that descriptions is kind of meaningless.  It may help to say that C!rca are from Australia (meaning it’s unconventional).  But really nothing prepared me for what we saw. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Christopher Monks–The Ultimate Game Guide to Your Life® Or, The Video Game as Existential Metaphor (2008)

Posted in Christopher Monks, Contests, Einstürzende Neubauten, Funky Web Sites, Funny (ha ha), Marriage (Happy), McSweeney's, Michael J. Nelson, Portishead, Set at School, Super Mario Brothers, Technology, Tekken, Universities, Video Games, Virginity (Loss of) on November 19, 2008| Leave a Comment »

yourlifeSOUNDTRACK: PORTISHEAD-Third (2008).

3rdThis is probably one of the spookiest albums I’ve heard in a long time.  And, boy, do I love it.

Portishead has been away from the music scene for about ten years.  They’d had a couple of hits, sort of gloomy trip hop all held together by Beth Gibbons’ otherworldly voice (“Nobody loves me, it’s true, not like you do”).  But frankly, after ten years I wasn’t even sure if I cared about Portishead anymore.  And then, I heard the songs!

Beth Gibbons’ voice sounds even more ghostly than before.  And the noises that Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley make are totally beyond the pale.  Some of the music sounds like pieces from a late night horror movie.  Take the bizarro verse music of “Hunter,” guitar chords stretched beyond recognition alternating with a keyboard riff straight out of “Revenge of the Cheapo Zombie Monster.” Or the aggressive soundtrack of “Machine Gun,” in which Gibbons sings over a musical piece that is more or less an electronic drum that sounds like a machine gun.  It’s pretty intense.

But just when you think the whole disc is nothing but uneasy listening, they thrown in the beautiful acoustic simplicity of “The Rip,” a simple acoustic guitar playing over Gibbons’ sultry voice, or “Deep Water” a minute and a half of old timey ukulele music.  Of course, these songs are bookeneded by two creepy tracks: “Plastic” in all its eeriness, and “We Carry On” some of the most unusual sounds ever to be called music (aside from Einsturzende Neubauten, of course).

Somehow all of the unsettling sounds work wonderfully together.  And, although I haven’t processed all the lyrics yet, previous Portishead albums would lead me to believe that things aren’t very peachy in Gibbons’ world.  And yet, despite that, I find the album very uplifting and not at all depressing.

Maybe every band should take ten years between records if it yields results this great.

[READ: November 16, 2008] The Ultimate Game Guide to Your Life®

I used to work with the author of this book.  Perhaps a dozen or so years ago, Christopher (just Chris back then) Monks and I worked at Wordsworth Books in beautiful Cambridge, MA.   When I learned that he was writing for McSweeney’s (and has since become the editor of their online website) I was very impressed and happy for him and not at all jealous or seething with envy at his wonderful, picturesque life in the Massacusetts suburbs.  But, more to the point, when I read his works, and his website, he displayed humor that was in little evidence at work.  (Talk about compartmentilization…).

Anyhow, he recently sent a generic email to everyone who has ever written him to say that he has a book out (and would we all go buy it, please).  Well, I’m always game to help someone who over the years I have come to consider a former co-worker. (more…)

Read Full Post »