February 10 - Sehnsucht

Einstürzende Neubauten - or collapsing new buildings in English - is a German industrial band. I discovered Einstürzende Neubauten through Nick Cave, whom I was introduced to in high school by Lars Tomren Støring, who was in my grade and with a more alternative musical taste. He introduced me to the album Tender Prey, and that really opened up a new and slightly more alternative door for me. The early music Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds was noisy, sometimes chaotic, but with Nick Cave himself holding some strange, hypnotic control of the chaos. His right hand man in The Bad Seeds was Blixa Bargeld, so when I found out about his other band, I was curious. However, it would take quite a while before I was able to digest all the chaos first in the early music of Nick Cave, and a little later in Einstürzende Neubauten.

Their industrial sound is not marked by very mechanical beats, such as bands like Nine Inch Nails and Ministry use, nor are they into too many synthesizers like the British bands Throbbing Gristle and Coil (and the aforementioned American bands). What makes Einstürzende Neubauten unique is their desire to use industrial equipment as part of their musical sound, mostly on the percussive side. This isn't necessarily a new idea. I grew up listening to The Typewriter, a piece composed for orchestra and typewriter by Leroy Anderson. Yes, it was composed with a comedic effect in mind, but it also brought the idea of more everyday sounds fitting in with music.

When it comes to what can be considered music, I do adhere to Frank Zappa's notion that if someone wills it to be music, it is music - or, as the composer Larry Austin said, "Music is wanted sound." What that means is that if something is put in a piece of music for a reason, it is music. John Cage famously composed the piece 4'33" - which consists of 4 minutes and thirty three seconds of musicians not playing their instruments - but it isn't about silence, it is about all the sounds present in the room. All those little noises that are being heard when it is being performed are sounds that are wanted - so in my view, 4'33" is indeed music.

But, although Einstürzende Neubauten declared that Silence is Sexy with one of their albums, silence is not the key component of today's song. We are entering a world of noises, very strange noises at times (some of them are coming out of lead singer Blixa Bargeld's mouth) - of instruments played in very unorthodox ways - and of very unorthodox instruments. There is concrete and metal tools, and there are electric guitars. And there is Blixa. The title, Sehnsucht, means intense longing, and I really think that the pain of longing or yearning for someone or something is expressed perfectly well in this piece. To me, the best music invokes intense emotion, and that is in my very humble opinion very much the case in Sehnsucht.