Einstürzende Neubauten will release their new studio album “RAMPEN (apm: alien pop music)” on April 5, 2024
They are searching for new forms. For the undiscovered sound and the yet unspoken word. Since their founding on April 1, 1980, Einstürzende Neubauten have shifted the parameters of mainstream and subculture to make the unheard audible. And perhaps also the unheard of. A field research attempt spanning four decades that is now entering its next stage. In their 44th year of existence, the band is going back to its roots while simultaneously redefining itself. A changed self-understanding for which the Berlin quintet plus one has created its own genre in 2024: apm – alien pop music.
Constant development – that could be a brief summary of the work of Einstürzende Neubauten. A musical evolution that begins with the debut album “Kollaps” released in 1981 and now manifests in the album “Rampen – apm: alien pop music” coming out in April 2024, where Blixa Bargeld, N.U. Unruh, Alexander Hacke, Jochen Arbeit, Rudolph Moser, and Felix Gebhard present themselves in their most unpredictable and idiosyncratic form. On their new album, the Neubauten put an end to all sound speculations – albeit a late one.
Since the mid-1980s, Einstürzende Neubauten have been experimenting on stage with so-called ramps: public improvisations with open development and outcomes; launch pads into the yet unexplored, which the band performed during the encore of their last “Alles in Allem” tour in 2022, and whose recordings serve as the basis for the new album.
“Rampen – apm: alien pop music” is pop music for parallel universes and in-between worlds. For hyperspaces and interzones. Microcosmic and intergalactic at the same time. A demi-mondaine assertion outside all physical laws, with which Einstürzende Neubauten enter a stylistic no man's land between past and future. A return to the roots on one hand, while on the other hand, a new art form emerges from noise-heavy explosive eruptions, aptly matching cryptic, often fragmentary lyrics: popular music for aliens and outsiders. Anti-pop has become alien pop. Strange. Cocoon-like spun. Unheard. Sonus inauditus. Not entirely unintentionally, the reduced cover artwork recalls the iconic layout of the “White Album” by the Beatles. “Based on the idea that Einstürzende Neubauten are just as famous in another solar system as the Beatles are in our world,” says Blixa Bargeld about the balancing act between avant-garde and winking, provocation and pop cultural discontinuity.
Thus, the central theme is directly set, which runs like a red thread through all the songs: change, utopian thought experiments, and transience.
“I found a few solutions on the record and formulated things that I hadn’t formulated before because they weren’t clear to me yet. I am someone who thinks of gaining insights through music. That has always been the case. The conviction of finding something in music that I didn’t know before. And singing something that I didn’t know before. Something that then turns out to be truth. Or at least meaningful, if you want to keep it a little smaller.” This album represents the next stage of evolution, where one has finally left the known language behind. And the opening of further, infinite possibilities: alien pop music.
The album will be released as a double vinyl (5000 pieces limited numbered special luxury edition made of colored 180g vinyl and with a poster, as well as 5 photo cards of the band members as a supplement), standard vinyl double LP made of organic vinyl, and double CD.
EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN - alien pop music - Tour 2024
September 5, Vienna - Arena Open Air
September 6, Munich - Muffathalle
September 9, Berlin - Columbiahalle
September 14, Cologne - E-Werk
September 15, Hamburg - Elbphilharmonie
October 5, Zurich - Volkshaus
October 6, Geneva - Alhambra
October 8, Frankfurt - Batschkapp
October 17, Leipzig - Haus Auensee
Booking: KKT Berlin
