They are regarded as the most important engines in the development of new musical strategies.Hardly another German band has characterized the music landscape as lastingly as Einstürzende Neubauten. Their influence on the music world was and is as great as their timeless character. With “Grundstück”, a real rarity is being released on the commercial market for the first time: Originally issued in 2005 as a small, limited edition, strictly intended only for registered band supporters, the much sought-after album is now officially available as a CD and also for the first time ever as an LP, each including a DVD with previously unpublished film recordings of the project and an extensive booklet.
Looking back to the year 2002: To make itself independent of the record industry and to keep full artistic control, the band brought to life an internet-based fan action for the financing of their next album and advanced quite incidentally into early pioneers of crowdfunding – many years before other renowned international stars discovered this model for themselves. Grundstück is the missing link between “Perpetuum Mobile” released in 2004 and “Alles wieder Offen”, which came out three years later. It’s an interim work consciously conserved in its unfinished condition, where an ongoing development process between two albums was recorded on a separate medium. “Grundstück” represents what the album title asserts: One’s own lot. A selfbuilt, stylistic and primarily ideological microcosm within pop culture, in which Einstürzende Neubauten can pursue its sound research processes completely self-sufficiently and undisturbed.
Grundstück opens with the noisy and propelling “Good Morning Everybody,” based on engine sounds of air compressors and accompanied by rhythmic steel plate beats. The seven-part title track shapes its core, which in its perforated, eruptive and largely atonal experimental spirit represents all that the name E.N. stands for to this day: Non-conformism and nihilism practiced uncompromisingly until it becomes pure culture. The album is rounded off by industrial lounge sounds in “Wo sind meine Schuhe?” and the hypnotizing studio improvisation “Tagelang weiss.”
Closely connected to the album, an accompanying DVD was also produced with the help of a supporter. It was filmed on November 3, 2004, during a special supporter gig at East Berlin’s Palast der Republik; the earlier political apparatus of the former GDR state leadership. Exclusive live recordings were made at a historical location, which was torn down shortly thereafter to make way for a demonstration of the power of the freshly reunited Federal Republic of Germany. E.N. in the gutted control center of a collapsed state – a witness of the times with the greatest possible symbolic value: Einsturz (collapsing), Neubau (rebuilding), Grundstück (lot).
Released Early September 2018 by Potomak.
Track Listing:
01. Good Morning Everybody
Grundstück
02. GS 1
03. GS 2
04. Unseasonable Weather
05. GS 3
06. Vox Populi
07. November / Sie lächelt
08. Neun Arme / Die Nacht
09. Wo sind meine Schuhe?
10. Tagelang Weiss
English