Kollaps

 

 

 

(Scroll down for English version)

 

Offenkundig hat man im Hause Bloomsbury entschieden, die bekannte 33 1/3-Serie um regionale Ausgaben zu erweitern; unter dem Oberbegriff "33 1/3 Global" sind bis jetzt Bücher über Werke aus Brasilien, Japan, Ozeanien, Europa und Süd-Asien erschienen. Zu den ersten Veröffentlichungen des Europa-Zweiges gehört das Buch über das Album Kollaps von 1981 der Einstürzenden Neubauten.

 

Kollaps war nicht das erste Klangsignal der Einstürzenden Neubauten. Vorher, um 1980/81, gab es bereits eine Reihe von Cassettenveröffentlichungen (Stahlmusik; Live in Kunstkopfstereo; Chaos-Sehnsucht/Energie) in verschiedenen Besetzungen. Die erschienen auf dem Eisengrau-Label, das so benannt war nach einem Kreuzberger Klamottenladen, betrieben zunächst von den späteren Malaria!-Mitgliedern Bettina Köster und Gudrun Gut, später dann von Blixa Bargeld übernommen; auch Frieder Butzmann, die Tödliche Doris und einige andere starteten dort. Auch Beate Bartel, Alexander Hacke und N.U. Unruh liefen dort herum, man sieht schon da, wie sich die Szene zusammenfand. Es war kein großes Kunststück, schon rein räumlich konnte man sich kaum verfehlen. 

 

Die West-Berliner Szene jener Zeit erinnert stark an das New York der 1970er Jahre: Auch dort fand man leere Fabriketagen und andere, oft bereits in Zerfall übergehende Gebäude, die man kapern oder für wenig Geld mieten konnte. Diese Umgebung, diese Arbeitsatmosphäre führte fast zwangsläufig zu künstlerischen Darstellungsformen, die anderswo kaum so hätten entstehen können. Die Stahlmusik wurde vermutlich im damaligen "Proberaum" der Band im Inneren einer Autobahnbrücke aufgenommen. Man erinnert sich an einen TV-Bericht, der das zeigte -- der Hohlraum war ungefähr anderthalb Meter hoch und fünfzig Meter lang, die Stahlträger wurden zur Percussion; entsprechend war die Akustik -- der Titel war Programm. (Kann aber auch sein, dass das schon damals nur Futter für die Medien war, who knows.) Die Auflagen der resultierenden Tapes dürften jeweils um die 20 Stück gewesen sein. Es gab damals auch andere Bands, die diesen Weg gegangen sind; ich kannte ihn vor allem von Ost-Berliner / Prenzlberger Untergrundbands wie etwa dem Freien Orchester, deren Westkontakt ich eine Zeitlang war.

 

1981 erschien dann Kollaps, das erste "offizielle" Album der Neubauten, veröffentlicht auf Alfred Hilsbergs frisch gegründetem Zickzack-Label. Auch dieser Platte haftete das Gerücht an, sie sei in jener Autobahnbrücke entstanden, aber das ist nicht richtig. Die LP wurde weitgehend im Hamburger Hafenklang-Studio aufgenommen. Der Tonmann ließ die Band machen, und da sie tagelang auf Speed aufnahmen, resultierte das Ganze in Einspielungen, die, sagen wir mal, unter normalen Studiobedingungen nicht entstanden wären. Die ungeheure Radikalität dieser Platte beeindruckt noch heute. Gleichwohl ist sie ein Kind ihrer Zeit; dass sie Staub angesetzt hat, ist unüberhörbar. 

 

Die Produktion und Rahmenbedingungen ihrer Entstehung kann man jetzt in einem Buch aus der Reihe "33 1/3 Europe" nachlesen. Titel für Titel arbeiten sich die Autoren durch das Werk, wobei sie nicht nur Fakten darlegen, sondern das Album auch in den Kontext der damaligen Jahre stellen und darüber nachdenken, was es uns heute noch zu sagen hat. Und das ist nicht wenig. Vor allem wird klar, dass die Rolle West-Berlins, Kreuzbergs, kaum hoch genug eingeschätzt werden kann. In München oder Frankfurt wäre eine Gruppe wie die Einstürzenden Neubauten nicht entstanden, auch nicht in Düsseldorf. -- Typisch wiederum für Hamburg, dass der Großregisseur Peter Zadek die Band für seine "Andi"-Inszenierung ins Deutsche Schauspielhaus holte, was letztlich dazu führte, dass die Neubauten mit ihrer Musik nicht nur erstmals ein paar Mäuse verdienten, sondern die Leiter zum Kunstprojekt erklimmen konnten. Aber das ist eine andere Geschichte und soll ein andermal erzählt werden.

 

Kleine Kritik am Rande: Anscheinend ist man beim Verlag dem Irrtum aufgesessen, eine serifenlose Schrifttype wirke moderner als eine klassische Buchschrift. Tatsächlich macht sie das Lesen zur Tortur und nervt sehr schnell ganz ungeheuerlich. 

 

Melle Jan Kromhout & Jan Nieuwenhuis:
Kollaps
Reihe 33 1/3 Europe, Bloomsbury Academic 2024
120 Seiten
ISBN 978-1-5013-8750-0 

 

Apparently, Bloomsbury has decided to expand its well-known 33 1/3 series with regional editions; under the umbrella term "33 1/3 Global," books have so far been published on works from Brazil, Japan, Oceania, Europe, and South Asia. Among the first publications of the European branch is the book about Einstürzende Neubauten's 1981 album Kollaps.

Kollaps was not Einstürzende Neubauten's first sonic statement. Before that, around 1980/81, there were already a number of cassette releases (Stahlmusik; Live in Kunstkopfstereo; Chaos-Sehnsucht/Energie) with various lineups. These were released on the Eisengrau label, named after a clothing store in Kreuzberg, initially run by future Malaria! members Bettina Köster and Gudrun Gut, and later taken over by Blixa Bargeld; Frieder Butzmann, Die Tödliche Doris, and several others also got their start there. Beate Bartel, Alexander Hacke, and N.U. Unruh also hung out there, which shows how the scene came together. It wasn't difficult to meet, given the close proximity.

The West Berlin scene of that time strongly resembles New York in the 1970s: there, too, one could find empty factory floors and other buildings, often already in a state of decay, that could be taken over or rented cheaply. This environment, this working atmosphere, almost inevitably led to artistic forms of expression that could hardly have arisen elsewhere. The Stahlmusik tape was probably recorded in the band's then-rehearsal space inside an autobahn bridge. One remembers a TV report that showed this – the hollow space was about one and a half meters high and fifty meters long, the steel girders were used as percussion instruments; the acoustics were accordingly – the title said it all. (But it's also possible that this was just fodder for the media back then, who knows.) The print runs of the resulting tapes were probably around 20 copies each. There were other bands at the time who went this route; I knew it primarily from East Berlin/Prenzlauer Berg underground bands like Das Freie Orchester, whose contact person to West-Germany I was for a while.

In 1981, Kollaps was released, the first "official" album by Einstürzende Neubauten, released on Alfred Hilsberg's newly founded Zickzack label. This record also had the rumor attached to it that it was created inside that highway bridge, but that's not true. The LP was largely recorded in the Hafenklang studio in Hamburg. The sound engineer let the band do their thing, and since they recorded for days on speed, the whole thing resulted in recordings that, let's say, wouldn't have been created under normal studio conditions. The immense radicalism of this record is still impressive today. Nevertheless, the album is a product of its time; it's unmistakable that it has gathered dust over the years. 

 

The production and circumstances of its creation can now be read about in a book from the "33 1/3 Europe" series. The authors work their way through the album track by track, not only presenting facts but also placing the album in the context of those years and reflecting on what it still has to say to us today. And that's quite a lot. Above all, it becomes clear that the role of West Berlin, of Kreuzberg, can hardly be overestimated. A group like Einstürzende Neubauten would not have emerged in Munich or Frankfurt, nor in Düsseldorf. -- Typically for Hamburg, however, the renowned director Peter Zadek hired the band for the Deutsche Schauspielhaus to do the live music for his "Andi" production, which ultimately led to the Neubauten not only earning some money with their music for the first time, but also climbing the ladder to becoming an art project. But that's another story and will be told another time.

A small criticism on the side: Apparently, the publisher fell for the misconception that a sans-serif font looks more modern than a classic book font. But in fact, it makes reading a torture and quickly becomes incredibly annoying.

Melle Jan Kromhout & Jan Nieuwenhuis:
Kollaps
33 1/3 Europe series, Bloomsbury Academic 2024
120 pages
ISBN 978-1-5013-8750-0

Alan Warner: Tago Mago (33 1/3)

(Die deutsche Version dieser Besprechung finden Sie hier bei Manafonistas!)

Of course, all Can fans know the dog barking on the track "Aumgn". And now we finally get to know who its creator was: a schnauzer named Assi who belonged to Irmin Schmidt.

Most of the news we get from this book is similar thrilling.

Since its start, the book series 33 1/3  picks up mainly rock classics and commercially successful albums. More difficult stuff wasn't ignored, but it was the exception. Since the series went from Continuum Books to Bloomsbury, this tendency seems to grow, as a look at the forthcoming publications shows.

Up to now there has been no book about any albums from German bands. Volume 101 is the first one: Alan Warner's book on Can's double album Tago Mago from 1971. That's not a bad choice. Tago Mago survived all turbulencies of the decades, is musically nearly intangible, and - others than most products carrying this attribute - it can be called "legendary" for sure.

What is left to be written about a work that now, at the age of 43, is probably more popular than at the time when it was new? Alan Warner, to foreclose it, did not find a convincing answer. Of course, this question goes for several other albums of the series, and usually the authors go one of the following two ways: Either, the album is analysed musically and/or in view of its reception history. Sometimes this works fine (as in case of Geeta Dayal's book on Brian Eno's Another Green World), but it also happens (as in Dan Breithaupt's book on Steely Dan's Aja) that this concept turns out to be rather complicated and theory-loaded. Or, the second possibility: The album is seen as a sort of leitmotif through the author's own (more or less interesting) life. Alan Warner's book falls clearly into the second category.

Whoever hopes to see new information on the history of making or the reception history of Tago Mago won't get very happy with this book. Through the first hundred pages, Tago Mago is not much more than a frame, over long passages it's mainly about Warner's youth.

Alan Warner was born in 1964, grew up somewhere in the Scottish backwater and was 7 when Tago Mago was released. Soon it becomes clear that he discovered Can not before the 1980s when the band had disbanded already, and his access to them were the Sex Pistols - John Lydon had said something about Can's drummer Jaki Liebezeit. Punk and New Wave bands, a couple of jazz musicians and life in a smalltown make the context of Warner's search for Can, and he comes back to this background all over again. There are some nice anecdotes about this time - like, to name one, he visits with his mother a local very white-bread record shop to complain about a damaged copy of Ian Dury's LP New Boots And Panties!!, and when the shop assistant plays the record, Dury a cappella roars the first line: "Arseholes, bastards, fucking cunts and pricks ..." through the whole shop.

Tago Mago was not even the first Can album he got into touch with. Before that he had discovered their 1979 self-titled album (the one with the spanner cover) at a Virgin Megastore in Glasgow, but this album is very different from the earlier Can stuff. Along with that he had all this myths and fairytales about German rock musicians and their hippie-esque way of life in his head - all the stuff that had been planted there by the British music press. Among other things he had heard that the Can members lived in a castle, and he tries to envision how it might look there, whether the musicians grow their own vegetables, and he speculates about Malcolm Mooney's washing habits.

And when one thinks on page 97 that now finally Warner will talk about Tago Mago, one has to learn that first the conditions of Schloss Nörvenich (the "castle" near Cologne where the band had their studio for four years) are characterized, followed by several pages of thoughts about theory, reality and mysteries of tape editing. This is not even uninteresting, but it has much more to do with Teo Macero and several Miles Davis albums than with Can.

It's not before page 108 that finally really Tago Mago is in the center of view. But there's no real news coming up. The author conducted interviews with Irmin Schmidt and Jaki Liebezeit, but the yield is meager (except maybe the Assi thing). That the band never lived at Schloss Nörvenich, that Tago Mago is a result of excellent tape editing, that none of the tracks was recorded in one go, and that it's to thank Irmin Schmidt's wife Hildegard (Can's manager) that Tago Mago became a double album - all this is long known. Warner's perception and way of presenting his results is mainly descriptive; neither there are musical analyses, nor will you find a paragraph about the musician's then conditions of work and living. 

It looks as if really anything about this album has been said already, but not by everybody. With this book there is one more voice in the choir, but that's it. And that's a bit too thin for a complete book. But at least it is well written, so for a nice read at the beach or during a train ride it's fine, particularly as it is small enough to fit into every pocket. And when the result is that one listens again to the album, then it has done its job.


Alan Warner: Tago Mago.
Bloomsbury Academic 2015.
142 pages.
ISBN 978-1-62892-108-3.