Einstürzende Neubauten

The Jewels

[4/5]

What started as a diversion for the their members has become one of Einstürzende Neubauten’s most fascinating and introspective albums. With only one exception, every song is under four minutes; most are sonically sparse, featuring a few clicking and thumping sounds as rhythm, a one-finger melody line and the usual crackles, rustles and clatter that have been the foundation of these German junkyard sculptors’ music for nearly 30 years. The lone exception, the six-and-a-half-minute epic “Die Ebenen (Werden Nicht Vermischt),” is the album’s peak, built around a trance-inducing bass throb heard on many earlier Neubauten tracks (including “Open Fire,” from Strategies Against Architecture III, and “Kalte Sterne,” one of their earliest recordings). Though its tracks were composed at least partly by chance, The Jewels is a beautiful work of unique and very real art, as thoughtful and conceptually coherent as any Neubauten project before it. (POTOMAK) Phil Freeman

Categories: