BLIXA BARGELD

Blixa Bargeld is probably best known as a founding member of the German group Einstürzende Neubauten and the former idiosyncratic guitarist in Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Numerous concert-tours through Europe, North- and South America, Australia and Japan. Works as composer, author, actor, singer, musician, performer and lecturer in almost any field of interpretative art.

In the 1980s, Einstürzende Neubauten's frontman -- a former gravedigger, bartender, and theater manager who appropriated his first name from a brand of German ballpoint pen -- predicted that "the entire pop culture would change while we (Einstürzende Neubauten) would remain the same, and the day would come when our 'noise' would sound like their new 'music.'" His prediction was not too far off, evidenced by the popularity in the 1990s of what has come to be known as "industrial" music. By the mid-1990s, in fact, Einstürzende Neubauten's music seemed much tamer, due in part to the "noisification" of mainstream music, and also to the natural growth and change that is part of the band's creative process.
As Bargeld told Kenneth Laddish of Mondo 2000: "When we are at our best, our sounds form sentences as surely as words, which reinforces on another level what we are trying to express. The idea of using sound, stepping away from notes-add to this the quality of what the instrument actually is: this is burning oil. Put in a certain context, you compose a sentence dealing with burning oil."

Blixa Bargeld performed with Alva Noto for 23five at the Recombinant Media Labs in 2007.

www.neubauten.org