The legendary German band Einstürzende Neubauten will perform on October 18 at Karlín Forum in Prague. He will present live his new album called Rampen – apm: alien pop music, which will be released this April. The recording is based on the free live improvisations that its members Blixa Bargeld, N. U. Unruh, Alexander Hacke, Jochen Arbeit, Rudolph Moser and Felix Gebhard played two years ago on the tour for the latest album Alles in Allem. It will bring a new art form named apm – alien pop music: pop music for parallel universes and interworlds, for hyperspaces and interzones. Microcosmic and intergalactic at the same time. Ticket pre-sale for the band’s supporters will start on February 8, 10:00 a.m., and for the general public on February 9, 10:00 a.m., on the Ticketmaster and Ticketportal networks. The concert is organized by the 10:15 Entertainment agency.
It’s hard to find a name in the music world that is more synonymous with experimentation and innovation than the band Einstürzende Neubauten. Since its formation forty-four years ago in West Berlin, the formation has become famous not only for using self-made instruments from scrap metal and everyday objects, but above all for tireless and constantly new musical experiments and exploration of uncharted sonic territories. It has influenced many other bands and artistic genres – from dance theater to visual arts and film.
Einstürzende Neubauten were created on April 1, 1980, actually by accident. Blixa Bargeld was asked if he wanted to play at Berlin’s Moon club, after which he said he “just called some friends”. And whoever had time that evening became a founding member of this formation. Since their debut album Kollaps in 1981, the band has changed the parameters of mainstream and subculture to make the unheard – and perhaps the unheard – heard. This experimental field research is now entering a new phase – the “ramp” phase, in which the band returns to its roots and redefines itself at the same time. And he creates his own genre called apm – alien pop music.
The album Rampen – apm: alien pop music, on which the band presents itself from its most unpredictable and unconventional sides, is based on the so-called “ramps” performed live on the tour for the album Alles in Allem. In the band’s internal language, “Rampa” means an improvised live piece that Einstürzende Neubauten always include in the program of their concerts. They will then use these “ramps” as ideas or inspiration for a new album.
“Rampen – apm: alien pop music is pop music for parallel universes and interworlds – for hyperspaces and interzones. It is microcosmic and intergalactic at the same time. It is a mundane claim beyond all laws of physics with which Einstürzende Neubauten enter the stylish no-man’s land between past and future. On the one hand, there is a return to the roots, on the other, a new art form emerges from massive eruptions of noise that meet cryptic, often fragmentary texts: popular music for foreigners and outcasts. “Anti-pop has become alien pop,” says the band.
Strange. Spun like a cocoon. Unheard of. Sonus inauditus. It’s no coincidence that the album’s clean graphics are reminiscent of the Beatles’ iconic White Album cover. “It’s based on the idea that the Einstürzende Neubauten are as famous in another solar system as the Beatles are in our world,” says Blixa Bargeld, noting that it’s a balancing act between avant-garde and linguistic audacity, provocation and pop culture discontinuity. This approach also directly defines the central theme that runs as a common thread through all the songs: change, utopian mind games and transience.
“On the album, I found some solutions and formulated things in a way that I hadn’t formulated them before, because they were never so clear to me. I am a person who believes that knowledge can be reached through music. It’s always been that way. I follow the belief that I will find something in music that I did not know before. And sing something I didn’t know. Something that turns out to be true. Or at least something that makes sense,” concludes Blixa Bargeld. This album thus represents the next step in development, when the familiar language is finally abandoned and other, endless possibilities open up: alien pop music.
