Glaublicher Lärm

Some music-related thoughts:

- Once when I was working in a warehouse for these people, whom it frankly surprises me to see still in existence, one of my coworkers opined that the last real Einstürzende Neubauten album was whichever one preceded Ende Neu, since in between one or some of the members left—consulting wikipedia, I believe he must have been referring to the departure of F.M. Einheit. (Also learned: there is a movie called Blixa Bargeld Stole My Cowboy Boots in which Bargeld does not appear, but he does sometimes impersonate Kylie Minogue, evidently without bothering to memorize the lyrics.)  Whoever it was who espoused this opinion is presumably shocked by Alles wieder offen.  Consider "Ich hatte ein Wort"—practically a pop song!  (This is not a criticism; I like it, even though the way he sings the ends of the lines is kind of obvious—it's just a long way from "Vanadium-I-Ching" or "Halber Mensch", is all.)

- The Cloudland Canyons/Lichens collaboration "Exterminating Angel" sounds a hell of a lot like Achim Reichel circa Autovision with some extra droning sections put in.  One section in particular is highly reminiscent of "Jay Guru Dev" from that album.  I mention this solely because I want to see if I'll end up quoted on kranky's website again (presumably not).  (Update several months later: Nope. And I can't believe I didn't refer to "Engel der Vernichtung/Hospitalische Kinder" in the previous section of this post, given that I refer to "Exterminating Angel" in this one. What was wrong with me?)

- The new Miasma & the Carousel of Headless Horses album, Manfauna, features, in addition to an extremely strange name, a bassoonist.  This is all to the good, in my opinion, since bassoons are excellent and deserve a more prominent place in rock music.  It does, of course, mean that the band risks sounding more and more like early Univers Zero (not necessarily a bad thing). UZ is, as everyone knows, sort of the grandfather, along with Art Zoyd, of a school of oddly Belgium-centric bands playing what gets called chamber rock (UZ is Belgian, but I doubt that has much to do with it; anyway, Art Zoyd is French and the Stormy Six, who were more "out" than either of those two, were Italian and seem to have had practically no influence whatsoever).  Anyway.  Aquarius Records loves Miasma &c., but is seemingly completely ignorant of other bands playing in a similar style, even though they saw fit to namecheck UZ in their little review of the first Miasma album.  Since I was listening to the first DAAU album immediately after Manfauna, the oddity of this was made especially apparent.  (Similarly, they have a "Finland" section, but what they really mean is "Finnish bands related to a small clutch of labels releasing music approved by the Wire"; you don't hear anything from them about Finnish pop or rock bands, or even, as you might have antecedently thought, about legitimately experimental or progressive bands/performers like Alamaailman Vasarat or Kimmo Pohjonen, the Merzbow of polka; similarly, they love the band from which Miasma is an offshoot, Guapo, and are at least able to recognize that they're basically ripping Magma off wholesale, but seem uninterested in Eskaton, Shub-Niggurath, or Bondage Fruit, who you'd think would have a bonus since they're Japanese.)  There are a couple of obvious explanations for this fact, and I do continue to assume that the people there know next to everything about black/doom/stoner/etc metal, but it's still kind of disappointing, especially because DAAU, and Julverne, and Aranis (and Aranos!), and all that lot would probably interest the people who like Miasma and Univers Zero, and could, moreover, probably do with the help of a company that's very good at making people who want to be hip think they need to purchase this album or that, since they are not very well known, but that company is itself seemingly too beholden to trend to care.  Hélas!

Comments

[horus kemwer]

True, EN's mellowed, but how could it have been otherwise? Frankly, I find them a model for how to grow old gracefully as a band once famous for its anger and revolutionary sounds (contra such obvious examples as Metallica or Guns n' Roses). Although recent tracks may be more "catchy" than early EN, they remain true to the original aesthetic: dream logic guides the organization of found sounds. If anything, the increased "popiness" of EN's tracks is a sign of increased skill at their chosen method of composition.

[ben wolfson]

In fact it occurred to me that there are indeed foreshadowings of the new direction on Halber Mensch: "Letztes Biest" (that bit around "Halt mich fest!") and "Sand", a Hazlewood/Sinatra cover. Not to mention "Stella Maris".

Anyway, I didn't mean any of the above as a criticism of EN; I like the new album a lot. Just found it interesting.