Customer Reviews

Strategies Against Architechure 1

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is the first EN CD I ever owned and I think it was a very good introduction for me to the band. Most tracks are easily accessible without being too weird or noise-oriented for someone who hasn't heard the band before to get into. I like to listen to this album when I'm going to bed or walking around. It's like dancing in a war, and then getting drunk and falling asleep. I like the fact that I have no idea what any of the lyrics are. Then I can make up my own.

This music is just beautiful. It's very minimal -- too minimal even for the grit that characterized so much of their later music. Most of the songs make use of metal objects for the sounds, but there's also some softer, more watery music. At one point on this cd, they were literally making their music under a bridge, & a train went over. You can hear the train. In 20th century classical music, 2 antithetical compositional ideas were minimalism (which had some feeling of complete control) & aleatory,or just randomness. This cd's minimalism with the train that just happened to go by so they left it seems to me like it could be understood as a synthesis of those 2 views.

It's formative music for them, basic & pure, before their creativity demanded that they add more.

All I really want to say is that if you're the kind of person that thinks you're open minded because you listen to Jewel AND Korn, then this isn't the album or the band for you. Obviously, if you care about innovation and applying intelligence and a philosophy to a sonic structure, then by all means by this and most other Einstürzende Neubauten releases.

You have to listen to this compilation album with a grain of salt: it is one of the most intense and uncompromisingly brutal albums you'll ever hear in your life! No, it's not a grindcore or a black metal band, it's EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN's most extreme example of TRUE industrial music. The band memebers make "music" out of banging on metal plates, using pneumatic drills, making explotions, and using every possible tool to create pure mayhem. Just imagine this: the "bass drum's" skin is a sheet of metal!!! "Tanz Debil" opens this barrage of noise and the album never lets up. "Kalte Sterne" might sound like a very primitive THE CURE and it is by FAR the album's most "musical" song. No wonder some extreme metal bands took NEUBAUTEN to heart. Although this has NOTHING to do with Metal (maybe punk, in the sense that this IS musical ANARCHY!), the attitude and brutality are very much alike. "Stratigien gegen architechturen" is basically the "Kollaps" album with some few extra tracks, but it's a good thing that, if you like this, also get "Kollaps". For open minded folks only and for people into really weird stuff! Steh auf!

there are some incredible tracks, but as a whole this is not very consistent...if you've never heard EN i would suggest "halber mensch" or "drawings of patient o.t."...if your looking for EN at their harshest and most primitive, this is the album you need though. honestly i would say this for dedicated fans only.

TO BE NO PART OF IT--that is their basic tenet. These guys play REAL industrial music-- conventional instruments are rarely used--and for the most part their sounds are sculpted from bizarre urban objects. They drill apart shopping carts, put microphones into fire, sample the hiss of hot steam, mumble strange things after staying awake for several days at a time, etcetera etcetera. If you enjoy experimental music, buy this album!

Second maybe only to Drawings of O.T., this album is a great collection of early material. Although not as mature as their later albums, the pieces on this release are very interesting...I would recommend this to anyone who already likes Einsturzende Neubauten or for those of you who listen to "credible" "industrial" like Throbbring Gristle, SPK, etc...people refer to Ministry and the like as being intense and angry and industrial...well Einsturzende is like a previous review states "the real thing." While these guys were doing something rarely attempted before, Ministry was making hilarious synth-pop dance music. Music politics aside, this is a great release...Einsturzende Neubauten was original and impressive throughout their career.

This is the album that completely turned my musical world upside dowm. Nothing compares. E.N. changed everything with this experimental album, and this album still stands alone even today. E.N. set the stage for bands like Ministry and Skinny to evolve. BUY THIS ALBUM!

`back in 88 this stuff sounded so horrible, german kids nihilisticaly banging on dying machinery, but now in my 50s all I hear is their youthful exuberance. Buy this for anyone having problems with depression, it will help them.

Duh...That's why they call it "Industrial"
Harsh,hypnotic, highly percussive, stark, brutal,primitive, repetitive, impossible to resist and undestand ( unless you speak German )experimental, ambient "noise" for the modern age. I listened to this tonight all the way through, and realised how varied it really is. The first few tracks are much more basic, the metallic clang you would expect, but no less because of it. Some of them are quite groovy ( although I almost hate to use that word, it makes you think of disco, and this certainly is not disco - although I'm not slagging dance music ). Drumming on the insides of traffic tunnels, found sounds, distorted vocals.... you get the idea. Then track 9 goes all bubble-gooey, with water and stuff in the background, with truly disturbing, scary chanting and screaming. Then the next song is more "band" sounding, the standard guitar-bass-drums-keyboards, but no less exhilerating. The whole thing is one giant sonic mess, a "stew" , if you will, and that's precisely why it rates five stars. It is at times the heaviest "heavy metal", the most trippy "psychedelic". A true classic.