Einsturzende Neubauten - London Koko - 24/4/07
4/5
By: Charlie Potter
Casual investigators in to their work often find there's a general sense of disappointment belonging to long term fans that shrouds Einstürzende Neubauten. It relates to a complaint that the legendary German industrial pioneers just aren't as noisy as they used to be.
But it's not as if there's a shortage of clamour in the music world at the moment. If you want to hear total noise, then you can go and watch Arguementix Audio, Merzbow, Panicsville, John Wiesse, Smegma, Whitehouse, Prurient, Aaron Dilloway, Kevin Drum, Caroliner Rainbow, Yellow Swans, Birds of Delay, David Scott Stone, Damien Romero, Sightings, Rubber-o-Cement, Massona, bilg, Deathgleaner, Mike Shiflet, Pulse Emitter, Runzelstirn Gurgelstock, Dylan Nyoukis, Dead Machines, Russell Haswell, Tim Hecker, Ecomorti... the list goes on...
And excuse the length of that list, but it's there for a reason. The fact is that the last Einstürzende Neubauten album 'Perpetuum Mobile' is absolutely amazing, and I for one am delighted that at this one off London show they mostly played songs from it, as would more people have been if they weren't so consumed with pining for their more raucous past.
The show is very centered around their voices, and indeed one of the strongest pillars of this performance is Blixa Bargeld's incredible vocal delivery. Not only does he sing the songs with such genuine passion, but you are also occasionally treated to a bizarre high pitched squeal the likes of which, if you heard it recorded, you'd struggle to believe was actually coming from a human.
Neubauten's bass player provides a lot of entertainment, lurching around as if he's in Bon Jovi and playing to ten thousand people, but of course what is much more entertaining than this is N.U. Unruh playing (amongst a wide array of bizarre instruments including a big wobbly stick) what can only be described as a bunch of plastic bottles and rubbish taped together into a cylinder placed on a record deck so the item is revolving, amplified by dragging contact microphones over it. The sound is much more interesting than you might expect - contact mics do have a tendency to sound very similar in lots of different situations but here they make a sound much like the sound they have on nature documentaries over pieces of time lapse photography. At one point in the set the whole band stops what they are playing just so this sound can be heard for about a minute or so - they then resume exactly were they left off. It was totally pointless, but utterly fantastic.
Half an hour through and 4 songs into their 2 hour set they have already played all my favourites, including a truly inspiring performance of 'Selbstportrait mit Kater', and a thought provoking, sensitively delivered 'Youme and Meyou'. Oh to be there again when Blixa sang 'they have proven quite effectively that bumble bees can indeed fly...'. But not all the good stuff is loaded towards the beginning, as there are plenty more gems to be unveiled, including an incredible encore that seemed to consist of a performance of one very, very long song.
Unfortunately, as so often happens, the biggest let down was the venue. Just how many times have you found yourself at Koko spending quite a lot of time trying to get in a good spot? And is there really anywhere in the whole venue that is a good spot for sound quality? Thankfully, the music prevailed, and a memorable night was had by all. But hey -couldn't have this been at the Barbican instead?
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