Zeichnungen Des Patienten O.T.

Released

The leap that Neubauten made between their 1981 debut album, Kollaps, and its successor, Zeichnungen Des Patienten O.T., was extraordinary, not the least because they accelerated the intensity and ferocity of Kollaps while finding a new eloquence amidst their ruins. The detail is heightened and richly sensuous, even when the music’s marinating in flames, as on the brutally overloaded “Abfackeln!”; there’s a great string of compositions through the middle of the album that locate the tactile properties of scraped metal and rub them up against deep pulses, morphed tape work, and savant guitar moves; by the time of “Armenia,” Bargeld’s wounded voice is drowning in the deep melancholy of the traditional folk melody Neubauten borrow for one of their most lasting compositions. They’d subsequently make albums that cover wider terrain, or that momentarily reach greater heights, but there’s something consummate about Zeichnungen Des Patienten O.T.; the Neubauten DNA is fully imprinted here.

Jon Dale

Suggestions
Tabula Rasa cover

Tabula Rasa

Einstürzende Neubauten
Mayor of Punkville cover

Mayor of Punkville

William Parker, The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra
O’Neal’s Porch cover

O’Neal’s Porch

William Parker Quartet
Third cover

Third

Portishead
Gottfried Michael Koenig cover

Gottfried Michael Koenig

Gottfried Michael Koenig
Morse cover

Morse

Alastair Galbraith