Blixa Bargeld is not one for small talk. When I first encounter the fearsome Einstürzende Neubauten frontman, I ask him how he is. He complains that he’s sick. “I’ve got a very bad cold,” he grumbles. “I’ll be gentle with you,” I splutter, and immediately wish I hadn’t. Bargeld, the drill-wielding noise terrorist with a scream that could shatter the Reichstag Dome in the Platz der Republik, sits stony-faced on our Zoom call as silence descends and memories of journalists previously devoured and spat out no doubt enter his thoughts.
Once in flight, Blixa will be erudite and polysyllabic. Nick Cave, who played with Bargeld for 20 years in Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, remembered when he first entered Blixa’s orbit, having moved to West Berlin in 1982: “I know he wouldn’t speak English to me for a long time and I couldn’t speak German at all,” said Cave, in an outtake from the 2014 documentary drama, 20,000 Days On Earth. Having assumed Bargeld was a monoglot incapable of conversing with him, he added: “And then one day he spoke English; this beautiful, expressive English. Blixa was always playing the long game.”
With an hour allotted for our interview, and with pleasantries fizzling like damp fireworks, we press on. Bargeld is here to talk about Rampen (APM: Alien Pop Music), Einstürzende Neubauten’s expansive, kaleidoscopic new double album, which is sprawling and understated, driven more by mood and texture than melody. There’s tension, too, like an unexploded ordnance or a praying mantis lying in wait.
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