Customer Reviews

Halber Mensch [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While the title is the same as the '85 Rough Trade album, the songs are different. You do get Halber Mensch, Z.N.S. [Z/Central Nervous System], Sehnsucht (zitternd), Der Tod ist ein Dandy and Letztes Biest (am Himmel). But you also get Armenia (maybe my favorite), Abfackelin, Die Zeichnungen des Patienten O.T. and Schaben (that wonderful Cathedral of noise).
Filmed in Japan and directed by Sogo Ishii. And it is as weird as you have been promised. Z.N.S features a very strange Japanese dance ensemble. Stunning visual landscapes throughout: Schaben, for example, places our boys in some sort of traffic median, out of earshot and quite marooned.
Wonderfully cosmopolitan!

This film is fantastic and a must have for any EN fan. What I'd like to know is if anyone has another version of the ZNS video featuring the same Butoh troupe. I saw another video of this song on German MTV back in the late 80's in Berlin but have never seen it again. In this version the dancers are still in a darkly lit warehouse, but picking up and smashing baseball sized steel bearings. It's absolutely eerie. I cannot even find it on YouTube...yet.

Take from All Music Guide: Though it's a bit less intentionally noisy than previous Neubaten material, ½ Mensch is, in a way, the group's masterpiece. The inspired use of such "traditional" instruments as a grand piano alongside the band's characteristic blazing percussion make for a record similar more to their compositional influences like Stockhausen than their nearest contemporaries, Throbbing Gristle or Cabaret Voltaire. The record that showed Einstürzende Neubaten could rise above the concept of noise for its own sake to reach another level of noise-oriented post-punk music, ½ Mensch is an excellent feat of industrial music. ~ John Bush, All Music Guide.

The complete track listing on this video is as follows: Armenia, Sehnsucht, Letztes Biest, Abfackeln!, Zerstorte Zelle, Z.N.S., Halber Mensch, Die Zeichnungen des Patienten, Der Tod ist ein Dandy, Schaben.

The man honored by Bizarre Magazine as one of the 10 top on-stage hazards of all time finally meets a troupe of japanese dancers who prove to be stranger than his little junkie-elf looking self.

A definate addition to the video collection of any sentient being who enjoys yelling at people through a megaphone on the street, drinking tea with small furry creatures, or banging rocks against metal things.

Easily enjoyable for anyone who likes a little manifesto before breakfast.