I am a self confessed music geek. I've got the big spec's, the only music magazine I buy is Wire, I have a nerdy vinyl collection of rarities and like nothing more than record shopping. Occasionally I hate myself for it but it could be worse I 'spose, I could actually play an instrument, well, I can play a portion of Popcorn on the stylophone but that's about it. So? What music are you into? Well, that's a very hard question to answer and I have agonised over it time and time again. My music taste is so disparate that it is hard to pin-down; sometimes however you are forced to stick your neck out, the last club-night I staged was called 'This Is Pop?' (named after an XTC song) and took place in Dalston, East London and on the accompanying promotional material I chose the following genres:
Post-Punk, New-Wave, Industrial, Experimental, No-Wave, E.B.M (Electro Body Music) and N.D.W (Neue Deutsche Welle) which translated means 'New German Wave' (pronounced in German as 'Noy-ah Doyt-cha Vell-a') N.D.W, as it will hereafter be referred reared it's head in the late seventies when music journalist Alfred Hilsberg conjured-up the term in 1979 to describe the growing underground music movement. To understand the sound of N.D.W you must first understand the politics of Germany at the time. Berlin, the city where the wave first struck was of course divided by an imposing concrete wall keeping the communist east segregated as The German Democratic Republic (DDR) with a very real sense of potential war, members of the DDR being shot dead trying to escape for the west. Berlin in particular would have been a politically cold place to be with reminders literally all around, barbed-wire, checkpoints and the presence of the military.
In the east musical output was controlled by the state, laws were passed meaning you could only release songs in German. For the east German youth there was little choice in music but some people could manage to pick up a western T.V. signal thus secretly exposing them to new sounds such as those created over the wall and later genres such as hip-hop. I am going to take this opportunity to introduce you to a few note-worthy N.D.W bands.
I will start off with Palais Schaumburg. Hailing from Hamburg the band were named after the former residence of the German Chancellor and was fronted by Holger Hiller. Holger was kind enough to DJ at my club-night last year playing a set comprised of demos and songs from the Schaumburg days never before heard in public; to the few hardcore Hiller fans that were amongst those that came this was a truly memorable occurrence. Here is the video for 'Wir Bauen Ein Neue Stadt...'
Continuing the run down here is a band who are sadly all but forgotten although I have managed to locate some of their much sort after releases on vinyl. Kosmonautentraum (translated somewhere along the lines of 'dreaming of a kosmonaut') were formed in 1980 and stand out amongst other N.D.W bands. Sonically they seem the capture how I would imagine the feel of Germany at the time. Not a video but a song never-the-less. Kosmonaut from the album Juri Gagarin:
Not all N.D.W bands have ebbed into obscurity however and without the doubt the most celebrated today are Einstürzende Neubauten who are regarded as particularly influential and have been name-dropped by such luminaries as Nick Cave and bands such as Sonic Youth. To show their versatility here are two videos, the first a performance of 'Sand' in 1990:
and secondly a clip from the Sogo Ishii film 'Haber Mensch'...
N.D.W was always dark in thematic however jolly it could appear on the surface. Here is a video from Die Radierer featuring a song about trying to poison yourself with Lego.
Finally (at least for this installment) I will leave you with Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft (a.k.a DAF and translated as 'German American Friendship) and the video for 'Der Räuber Und Der Prinz' (The Robber and the Prince.) DAF are another celebrated N.D.W band and even had a retrospective world tour last year and performed to capacity crowds in London, I was there and they are on fine form. Until next time then my exhausted reader, D.A.F...
Post-Punk, New-Wave, Industrial, Experimental, No-Wave, E.B.M (Electro Body Music) and N.D.W (Neue Deutsche Welle) which translated means 'New German Wave' (pronounced in German as 'Noy-ah Doyt-cha Vell-a') N.D.W, as it will hereafter be referred reared it's head in the late seventies when music journalist Alfred Hilsberg conjured-up the term in 1979 to describe the growing underground music movement. To understand the sound of N.D.W you must first understand the politics of Germany at the time. Berlin, the city where the wave first struck was of course divided by an imposing concrete wall keeping the communist east segregated as The German Democratic Republic (DDR) with a very real sense of potential war, members of the DDR being shot dead trying to escape for the west. Berlin in particular would have been a politically cold place to be with reminders literally all around, barbed-wire, checkpoints and the presence of the military.
In the east musical output was controlled by the state, laws were passed meaning you could only release songs in German. For the east German youth there was little choice in music but some people could manage to pick up a western T.V. signal thus secretly exposing them to new sounds such as those created over the wall and later genres such as hip-hop. I am going to take this opportunity to introduce you to a few note-worthy N.D.W bands.
I will start off with Palais Schaumburg. Hailing from Hamburg the band were named after the former residence of the German Chancellor and was fronted by Holger Hiller. Holger was kind enough to DJ at my club-night last year playing a set comprised of demos and songs from the Schaumburg days never before heard in public; to the few hardcore Hiller fans that were amongst those that came this was a truly memorable occurrence. Here is the video for 'Wir Bauen Ein Neue Stadt...'
Continuing the run down here is a band who are sadly all but forgotten although I have managed to locate some of their much sort after releases on vinyl. Kosmonautentraum (translated somewhere along the lines of 'dreaming of a kosmonaut') were formed in 1980 and stand out amongst other N.D.W bands. Sonically they seem the capture how I would imagine the feel of Germany at the time. Not a video but a song never-the-less. Kosmonaut from the album Juri Gagarin:
Not all N.D.W bands have ebbed into obscurity however and without the doubt the most celebrated today are Einstürzende Neubauten who are regarded as particularly influential and have been name-dropped by such luminaries as Nick Cave and bands such as Sonic Youth. To show their versatility here are two videos, the first a performance of 'Sand' in 1990:
and secondly a clip from the Sogo Ishii film 'Haber Mensch'...
N.D.W was always dark in thematic however jolly it could appear on the surface. Here is a video from Die Radierer featuring a song about trying to poison yourself with Lego.
Finally (at least for this installment) I will leave you with Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft (a.k.a DAF and translated as 'German American Friendship) and the video for 'Der Räuber Und Der Prinz' (The Robber and the Prince.) DAF are another celebrated N.D.W band and even had a retrospective world tour last year and performed to capacity crowds in London, I was there and they are on fine form. Until next time then my exhausted reader, D.A.F...
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