Tuesday, November 30, 2004  5:16 pm 

Dance, devil!

Einsturzende Neubauten- Tanz Debil

Their name stands for Collapsing New Buildings, maybe another strain of Situationist Architecture’s revolt against modernism. But they are not intellectuals, or at least not of the usual sort…

(slight detour)

The child starts striking the walls of the building closer to him, the walls of society, with his red hot fists. This can be seen, in Hegelian terms, as the stage of negation, that of the teenager revolting against his father, the essence of what we call ‘Rock and Roll’ and other youth movements, an unclouded(inexpert?) vision of the world which results in an anger that is expressed by attacking the social and cultural structures which are perceived to sustain injustice.

The child pounds and pummels the building, he screams and birds fall dead, the echo of his voice becomes an earthquake in far away lands, the building shakes slightly, some crumbs of concrete fall on his back, sweaty with oil, and eyes wide open stare from the windows up above…But soon the heat turns cold and the child grows tired, he sees, maybe someone shows him, an entrance, he rubs his fists and gives up, he comes inside the building, finds somewhere comfortable and warm and sits down, he becomes another brick soon to be hit by the next angry child, they keep coming, eventually surrendering.

Einsturzende Neubauten never gave up, they have kept striking the wall, pounding, crashing their body against it, full of rage and pain and anger and fury, for many years, with a demented, almost malevolent, abandon which stems not from craziness but from a clear, desperate vision. They are not alone, but there are not many like them.

The song I’m posting today is called Tanz Debil, the first one in their debut album, Kollaps , it starts their career (mission) with the most violent bang possible, I could talk about their relationship to Suicide (those screaming echoes and the abrasive chainsaw beats) and other industrialist noiseniks, could go on about the guitars exploding like a napalm barrage, all the distortion of a thousand no wave zealots distilled in a drop of sulphuric acid that burns the skin leaving an indelible scar, but I won’t because something has distracted me, I have realised, while listening, that after all, the noise and frenzy of Einsturzende Neubauten’s diabolic attack (because if Religion is the Opium of the People, then these men are the devil incarnate) is directed, right now, at me: I’m inside that building, looking with admiration, still safe and warm, to the dark beast charging down there, vicariously enjoying its savage revolt. I look at the abyss and, for a moment, I really feel like jumping.

(This song can also be found in Strategies Against Architecture 80-83, the compilation whose artwork Liars gloriously detourned(1) for their release of ‘There’s Always Room in the Broom’)

(1) The suitability of the term ‘detournement’ for the type of superficial modifications to which the Einsturzende Neubauten sleeve note was subject by Liars is dubious, as a reader pointed out (see comments)

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