½ human

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½ human
Studio album by Einstürzende Neubauten

Publication
(s)

1985

Label (s) What's So Funny About ...

Genre (s)

Industrial

Title (number)

8th

running time

35:06

occupation

production

Collapsing New Buildings and Gareth Jones

Studio (s)

Hansa recording studios , Berlin

chronology
Drawings of the patient OT
( 1983 ) 		½ human Five on the open-top Richter scale
( 1987 )

½ Mensch , also known as Halber Mensch , is the third studio album by the German music group Einstürzende Neubauten . It was released in October 1985 by What's So Funny About… (now ZickZack Records). It represents the departure from the earlier experimental noise and industrial sound towards a more conventional musical approach.

History of origin

In 1984, Einstürzende Neubauten found themselves in a technical crisis. The original approach, the experimental play with noises and the initially mostly unstructured noise, for which the band had become popular, developed into a dead end. In September 1984, Blixa Bargeld announced in the Musikexpress that she would break new ground in terms of composition. The industrial sound should not be given up entirely, but the aim now was to proceed in a more structured manner. If the previous recordings were often made with a time lag and were put together from individual sound recordings by sampling , the band now wanted to work together in the studio and largely avoided overdubs . The album was produced in the Berlin Hansa Studios by Gareth Jones , who had previously worked with Depeche Mode . The piece Sehnsucht is an exception . It was a holdover that was created during a John Peel session in 1983 on the BBC . It is therefore stuck in the original style of the band.

The album was released in October 1985 as a CD and LP version on the What's So Funny About… label, which was founded shortly before by Alfred Hilsberg . At that time Hilsberg had dissolved his actual label Zickzack Records due to over-indebtedness and was now trying to expand internationally with a large bank loan. To this end, Hilsberg concluded a new sales deal with EFA-Nord . Ata Tak , or their sales department Das Büro, felt betrayed and sued Hilsberg for the rights of the newly announced single Yü-Güng . Ultimately, Hilsberg got the rights to the single, but had to pay a fine of six thousand marks, which EFA took over. The bill worked out for EFA because they also secured the distribution of the album ½ Mensch . The album sold over 30,000 times, which was the greatest success for Hilsberg to date.

The first release of the album included the instrumental Das Schaben in two versions on a bonus 12 '' . This was based on Yü-Gung , but with a different sequence of sounds and consisted only of sound patterns of squeaking, screeching, rubbing pieces of metal. In contrast to the version with vocals, no real structure can be seen. Both pieces differed only slightly. In the later CD releases, both versions were combined into an almost 10-minute song.

On the occasion of the release of the album, there was also a collaboration with the Japanese director Sōgo Ishii , who accompanied the band on a performance in Japan. For the approximately 60-minute documentary film , the songs Sehnsucht , Last Biest , Halber Mensch , ZNS , Yü-Gung (feed my ego) , Death is a Dandy and Das Schaben were used, the rest came from previous albums by the band. The documentary shows the band in an empty factory hall, at a live concert and on the busy streets of Tokyo .

In 2002, a digitally remastered version in digipak, which contained three bonus tracks , was released on the Potomak label . The mastering was done by Michael Schwabe.

Music style and lyrics

While the previous albums were in many ways pure orgies of noise, the album ½ Mensch was the first of the band to reveal song structures. The music is strongly rhythm-oriented and still contains the elements for which the Einstürzende Neubauten were known. As on the previous albums, household items and industrial tools were used for the rhythm, but there were also synthesizer sounds and traditional instrumentation with bass and drums. In addition, rudimentary sampling was generated for the first time: the chunks of sound were placed in a loop and played over and over again. In addition, some songs were for the first time written in the pop music style verse - refrain - verse. The singing is mostly distorted into the inhuman, so Blixa Bargeld uses both guttural screeching and screaming, but also whispering.

In terms of lyrics, the album deals with human dissolution and the decline of society, a recurring theme in the Einstürzende Neubauten. The lyrics were essentially shaped by the excessive speed consumption of his protagonists, which found its way into all the songs on the album. This was explicitly discussed in Yü-Gung , which bears the subtitle Feed my ego . The whole album basically represents a night in the life of a speed consumer. The opening and title track of the album begins with alternating female and male vocals, which were recorded separately in the studio and then put together. MaGita Haberland von Abwärts also took part in the singing . The scenery is reminiscent of a flat share party. It is also the first song by Einstürzende Neubauten that does not consist of metal noise. Yü-Gung , at seven minutes the longest song on the album, has a danceable basic rhythm. This moved from chopping a razor on a mirror to imitate the drawing of a line . The text deals with the egomania and paranoia that develop under the consumption of speed. For example, recurring song lines say “Never sleep, everything lies, dusty pleasure” and with regard to the side effects of drug abuse: “Everything is rotten in my mouth and my nose has direct access to the brain”. In the following song Trinklied , motifs from The King in Thule by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe are used. The song uses an ancient language, combined with the rolling R . The CNS describes the awakening after a night of drinking and uses a whipping rhythm. Soul burns, on the other hand, works with the element of silence that unfolds between two piano tones, several screams and whispers from Blixa Bargeld. Death is a dandy consists of the sound of two screeching metal plates rubbing against each other and chains rattling. The text combines the theme of decay and death inherent in the new buildings with the aesthetic figure of a dandy on a horse. Last Beast (in Heaven) is rhythmically accompanied by the beating of two barrels. The text, which tells the confused story of a “star beast”, ends the album with the theme of dawn .

Track list

All songs are from Einstürzende Neubauten. The title track, which was written together with Nikkolai Weidemann, is an exception.

  1. Half human - 4:13
  2. Yü-Gung (feed my ego) - 7:14
  3. Drinking song! - 1:15
  4. CNS - 5:40
  5. Soul burns - 4:05
  6. Longing (trembling) - 2:55
  7. Death is a dandy - 6:41
  8. Last Beast (in Heaven) - 3:28

Bonus title

  1. Sand - 3:30 (cover by Lee Hazlewood )
  2. Yü-Gung (Adrian Sherwood Remix) - 7:28
  3. The scraping - 9:22

Single releases

Yü-Gung was decoupled as a Maxi-12 ''. For this purpose, music producer Adrian Sherwood , founder of the dub label On-U Sound , made his own remix of the piece. He had already made a name for himself through remixes for Depeche Mode and later worked with Cabaret Voltaire , Ministry and Nine Inch Nails . Sherwood didn't change the song very much, just varied the sequence. The B-side was titled “Two Love Songs”. There was a cover version called Sand and the album track Seele burns on the maxi. Sand had written Lee Hazlewood in 1967 for the B-side of Ladybird , his duet with Nancy Sinatra . The song is based closely on the original, so there is a guitar solo and bass accompaniment on the track. Nevertheless, typical new building elements are also represented. The rhythm, which consists of three beats, is underlaid with metallic sounds. In addition, Blixa Bargeld sang both vocal passages, which were actually based on dialogue. His English pronunciation sounded awkward. For the band, however, it was the first conventional song they released.

reception

Both commercially and musically, ½ Mensch was a first high point in the band's work. Musically, the album represented the band's most modern record to date and has a saddle position in the discography of the Einstürzende Neubauten. For the band themselves, the album served as a test. They tried to prevent their music from drifting into the gaudy and comical and now tried a little U-turn in order to preserve their identity, but also not to damage their own reputation. It was the first album in which the lyrics were printed and marked the transition from the “genial dilettante” phase, as the first artists of the Neue Deutsche Welle and the early punk movement understood each other, to music with an educational claim. In commercial terms, it was Alfred Hilsberg's most profitable publication to date. In particular, the song Yü-Gung became a hit in the discos and opened the Einstürzende Neubauten for the first time access to a broader audience apart from the industrial and punk scene. There were links to the increasingly popular electronic body music , but the Einstürzende Neubauten did not take this step.

Still, the music was still unsuitable for the masses. Ulf Kubanke described the album in the retrospective as "the most disturbing thing Germany had to offer in 1985". At laut.de , the album is listed as a so-called “milestone”, ie a “record that every music fan must have heard”. Johannes Ullmaier called the album in the pop music magazine Testcard "one of the most important records of the mid-eighties". The “symbiosis of punk and educational connection” would succeed on the album.

literature

  • Kirsten Borchardt: Collapsing new buildings . Hannibal Verlag, Höfen 2003, ISBN 3-85445-216-0 , p. 81-87 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Clausen: Half man. Retrieved November 19, 2016 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e Kirsten Borchardt: Einstürzende Neubauten . Hannibal Verlag, Höfen 2003, ISBN 3-85445-216-0 , p. 81-87 .
  3. ↑ a b ½ Mensch , CD booklet, Potomak 2002.
  4. ↑ Christof Meueler: The zigzag principle. Alfred Hilsberg - A life for the underground . Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-453-16803-9 , pp. 210 f .
  5. ↑ Our program: Half a man. Indigo , accessed March 19, 2017 .
  6. ↑ Half a man. Discogs , accessed March 19, 2017 .
  7. ↑ a b Th. Gross: Estate: The total work of noises . In: The time . December 12, 2002, p. 52 ( zeit.de ).
  8. ↑ Kirsten Borchardt: Einstürzende new buildings . Hannibal Verlag, Höfen 2003, ISBN 3-85445-216-0 , p. 133-135 .
  9. ↑ a b Johannes Ullmaier: Collapse on installments . In: Martin Büsser, Jochen Kleinherz, Jens Neumann, Johannes Ullmaier (eds.): Testcard: Contributions to pop history . Retro phenomena in the 90s. No. 4 . Ventil Verlag, Mainz 1997, ISBN 3-931555-03-8 , p. 135 f .
  10. ↑ Ulf Kubanke: A coat like sandpaper for timeless lines. laut.de, accessed on November 19, 2016 .