Einstürzende Neubauten "Strategies Against Architecture IV" US Tour : Dec 1 - 15

On the very ground floor of this precipitous cultural structure built on the ruin of the early 20th century's vision of Europe, in the dilapidated warehouses, urban ruins, and null-zone of Potsdamer Platz in proximity to the Berlin Wall, Einstürzende Neubauten were there at Industrial Music's inception, giving its birth a voice, form, and aesthetic. Following in the wake of Punk and early New Wave, Industrial Music culture bore many correspondences to its Postpunk and Gothic Rock siblings, yet defined itself apart for the literal mechanics of its production and aesthetics. Globally a number of epicenters for the sound's earliest formation could be found in Berlin, Chicago, New York, London, and the major coastal cities of California. Most notably and formative for the sound and its culture, the German scene was the initial defining locus. Gathering around the Geniale Dilletanten Festival, and its burgeoning music and performance subculture through efforts largely spearheaded by Wolfgang Müller, the genre's origin immediately expanded outwards to encompass multimedia, performance art, print and literary works. In a span of half a decade, this thriving scene in the margins of the divided city, gave birth to such artists as Die Tödliche Doris, Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft, F.S.K., Mania D, Palais Schaumburg, Sprung Aus Den Wolken, Abwärts, Malaria!, and Einstürzende Neubauten along with their various side projects and solo iterations. Theirs is a legendary presence that spans decades, and has been documented in numerous expansive articles and interviews, such as The Wire's cover feature, "Einstürzende Neubauten: Annihilating Angels", The Guardian's recount of a 1984 London performance, "How to Destroy the ICA with Drills", and Wired magazine, in "Einstürzende Neubauten has Cooked Mud, Transformed Meat".

Coinciding with Einstürzende Neubauten's 30th anniversary, they have released a fourth anthology of studio improvisations and commercially released recordings, live excerpts, and previously unreleased compositions. "Strategies Against Architecture IV", acts as a perfect summation of their decade of sonic explorations. This futurist anthology runs the gamut of grinding industrial ruin, theatrical poetic digressions, atmospheric meanderings, and propulsive rocking motoric groove. In his review for The Quietus, Tim Burrows states; "Approaching a world tour followed by imminent hiatus, they leave behind this varied yet cohesive record of the last eight years, a period of creativity that belies the band’s three decades. It’s a virile, nuanced alternative to a lot of the flat pop around at the moment, and suggests that there could be a lot more to come." Marking this occasion, this winter they embark on a tour of these explorations into the furthest fringes of experimental rock, lyricism, and collapsing architectural structures. The tour's announcement states that select cities will also play host to a second night wherein they will present a three-part program of films and installations; a short Neubauten live set with “material that has never been played live, hasn’t been played live for a long time or never in this form”; and performances by the band’s individual members “recomposed from city to city.” Update: "Einstürzende Neubauten Cancel US Tour". The band issued the below statement: “While the US Department of Homeland Security did issue approvals for the band’s visas, it was not done in time to secure the appointments at the overseas embassies and consulates that represent the necessary final step in the process. The band members are tremendously disappointed by this turn of events and wish to thank all those fans who purchased tickets for these performances, and for their support."

Link to Einstürzende Neubauten 30th anniversary tour tickets site

Link to official Einstürzende Neubauten site

Gaspar Noe's new film "Enter the Void" at Northwest Film Forum : Oct 8 - 14

Coming to Northwest Film Forum! From the director of the single-most-difficult piece of cinema I've ever seen,
not due to duration or glacial slowness or high-concept hoobaloo, but simply that the events depicted were of
a brutality and believability that I've never seen in cinema, before or since. Yep, we're talking Gaspar Noe's
"Irreversible", which at the time, friends and I spent a month debating it's potential merits and reasons to see it
knowing the premise and questioning the objective, relevance and result... and guess what? When finally seeing
it the film stands as a paramount, transformative, powerful piece of cinema like no other in the history of the medium.
Honest. That said, his previous film, "I Stand Alone" watches like a bit of postmodern comedy now, complete with
shock-value 'get out while you can!' mechanism that in the 90's was probably effective and original, but hasn't
weathered quite as well as "Irreversible" overall, yet still retains much of it's original brutality. My review of his
newest, "Enter the Void" begins with a lengthy string of qualifiers, but make it past those and you'll see my point here:



Even for it's dippy drug user 20something protagonist and his wayward sister (read: self-endangering, damaged),
even for the corniness of the '2001: A Space Odyssey' cosmic baby/vagcam nonsense of the end, even for it
exploring pretty literally the whole setup of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, as alluded to be the extended opening
sequence discussion of the three Bardos of 'Life, Death & Rebirth', even for all it's overlong redundancy, even for the
all first-person literalism - this was truly one of the most hallucineogenic, cosmic, tripped out explorations of perception,
sex and mortality that I've seen on screen in many years. From Chris Norris' fairly brilliant overview/article on the film in
the Oct. issue of Film Comment: "Noe calls the film's genre 'psychedelic melodrama', but it also falls into the much older
tradition of 'void' tales, whose tellers run from Dante, to Dickens, to Poe to Thornton Wilder. But the feeling I found in the
wake of Enter the Void was an ineffable sense of devotion - to craft, experience, perception, consciousness - whose only
meaning is likely in the topography Thorton Wilder saw gazing into Bardo: a land of the living, and a land of the dead,
bridged only, and tenuously, by love."

Link to Northwest Film Forum "Enter the Void" site

Link to IFC "Enter the Void" site

Link to Film Comment Sept/Oct Issue

Cary Grant Singlehandedly Averts the Cold War, Proving McCarthy to be the Fool He Is: MI6, Yugoslavia & Alfred Hitchcock's Unmade Film in Wu Ming's 54

Any novel that begins with this prologue:
"'Post-war' means nothing.
What fools called 'peace' simply meant moving away from the front.
Fools defended peace by supporting the armed wing of money.
Beyond the next dune the clashes continued. The fangs of chimerical beasts sinking into flesh, the heavens full of steel and smoke, whole cultures uprooted from the earth.
Fools fought the enemies of today by bankrolling those of tomorrow.
Fools swelled their chests, talked of 'freedom', 'democracy', 'in our country', as they devoured the fruits of riots and looting.
They were defending civilisation against Chinese shadows of dinosaurs.
They were defending the planet against fake images of asteroids.
They were defending the Chinese shadow of a civilization.
They were defending the fake image of a planet."
...and follows it on the back cover with reviews like this by the London Times Literary Supplement:
"This new work amply confirms Wu Ming's talent... Utterly convincing. What emerges is an epic about identity and celebrity, communism and corruption... A stupendous, charming, provocative and profound novel. It makes most modern books seem paltry in comparison."
...has my attention. A almost Pynchon-esque post-WW II depiction of the Italian/Yugoslavian 'zone' after the division of the territories and the partisan armies fighting both the Fascist forces in Italy and the encroaching German horde on the Communist border. The result? The amorphous postwar time/geography where the United States, Russia, the UK and Italy were all vying for a foothold as criminals, opportunists, political factions and espionage on all sides working the angles. Told from the generation who saw the very end of the war and attempts to reclaim their familial and cultural heritage from these competing factions, "54" by Wu Ming collective takes off from these political realities to spin a 'alternate reality' tale akin to Chabon's "Yiddish Policeman's Union" set in the era of the birth of the TV, the Suburbs, the postwar influence of America's Dream being the only dream, Hollywood's battle with McCarthyism and the nationwide witch hunt that was the 'Red Scare', the very beginnings of Vietnam and the decades of the Cold War that was to follow. So entrenched in reality and history, that when the events to detour, I often went to check my facts, especially when as we're reaching the culmination of the ensemble-cast threads all beginning to converge, Hollywood, British espionage MI6, Tito's Yugoslavia, Cannes, Italian Mobsters, Alfred Hitchcock and... Cary Grant all find themselves in the most unlikely (totally plausible) ciaroscuro of history, commerce, entertainment, politics, and postwar rebuilding fervor. Pretty darn brilliant. As a young collective of authors, this being an early work of theirs, already ranking near Chabon or Pynchon, if they've got more of this in them, expect Wu Ming to become known.