‘War is building itself up slowly in movements believed forgotten…’
Lately it is not uncommon for musicians to form their own narrative about the two major conflicts in the history of mankind. The task of reducing such a complex fact as a war to a few comprehensible and abstract ideas might seem like something easy to achieve. In fact, noise bands have already done this using their own often controversial way. However, when someone approaches this subject more wisely, showing a sincere interest for all the aspects of the subject as well as respect for the victims, then usually the result has a different quality. Zbigniew Preisner (i.e. ‘Diaries of Hope’), Max Richter (i.e. ‘Sarajevo’) and now Einstürzende Neubauten, are the musicians which, have interpreted interestingly and clearly, through music, such violent and shameful conflicts in the history of mankind
“First of all I have a problem with the term avant-garde because it’s military term, It means the guard that runs before the rest of the soldiers and if I want to see myself represented in military terms I don’t want to be part of that. I want to be one of the deserters. I want to be in the woods maybe…“(extract from an interview given by Blixa Bargeld to Andrew Lloyd Hughes of the University of Copenhagen)
Neubauten were commissioned by the authorities of Flandres to produce a music performance in order to commemorate the centenary of the beginning of WWI (this is quite unorthodox as commonly it is the end of wars that is celebrated not their beginning). This album was released a few days before the anniversary from the last battle of WWI and the band appeared live in the almost packed Koko, in London, 8 days later. Blixa Bargeld has openly admitted that he didn’t intend on been preoccupied with any of the wars and that he viewed this project mostly as a job that needed to be done. There was no support band but given the subject of ‘Lament’ and taking into consideration that this album is a complete music and theatrical performance, the presence of a support band would be a paradox. Unfortunately there was no dedicated dj for the evening and this didn’t help warm up the atmosphere during the two hours that we had been waiting for the band to appear on stage.