Neuntage - Soldier
(c) 2022 Aufnahme + Wiedergabe
Artist....: Neuntage
Album.....: Soldier
Source....: WEB/MP3
Tracks....: 12
Genre.....: Electronic
Label.....: Aufnahme + Wiedergabe
Encoder...: LAME 3.100
Quality...: 320 kbps / 441kHz / Joint Stereo
URL.......: http://www.deezer.com/us/album/443743205
Tracklist:
----------
1. Alone 3:11
2. Soldier 4:51
3. Golden Hair 2:03
4. Wedding Anniversary 5:12
5. Tidal Wave 4:01
6. At Noon Of Day 3:57
7. Secrets 3:00
8. Hanging Garden 3:57
9. Any Seems To Loosing 3:09
10.The Hand 5:16
11.Jingle 1:15
12.Romany Rye 4:11
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
44:03
Total:106.72MB / 44:03
Release Notes:
--------------
In 1983, some more subdued sounds began to waft from the GDR punk underground
into the second half of the Æ80s. At five to the end of time, it was perpetually
striking midnight and the occasional punk band would mix a little laudanum into
their potential for aggression. Portents in this vein preceded a dark wave whose
foamy crest would break on fog walls of dry ice. Especially in Leipzig and East
Berlin, a chain-rattling zeitgeist produced bands that drew from a dark well.
Many of these bands arose from the still hot or already cold ashes of punk.
The two founding fathers of Neuntage Alt, Rene┤ Glofke and Taymur Streng
(nicknamed ôStranglerö), knew each other from the East Berlin punk scene. The
third man aboard, Mike Sauer, played drums in the early 1980s for Sendeschlu▀, a
punk band that, lost in thought somewhere in the no-manÆs land between punk and
post-punk, faded away in 1984. Punk was no longer the order of the day, but it
was a form of expression among many and easy to combine. Glofke and Streng found
common ground in experimental set-ups with such other-worldly names as Medusa
Brahma or Die zeitweilige Erscheinung. From this far-flung point of departure, a
short tunnel led straight into the black light of Neuntage Alt, the coldest star
in the low-hanging sky above East Berlin.
Neuntage Alt appeared at the end of 1986, during the last blackout phase of the
GDR, on the threshold between the underground and the so-called ôother bandsö û
a scene that used the non-socio-critical approach of German Wutwave (ôanger
waveö) in order to be allowed to perform publicly. In the context of this scene,
Neuntage Alt did not belong to the inner circle. Moreover, the bandÆs
subcultural base was initially in Mahlsdorf, on the south-eastern edge of East
Berlin. This was where the DIY sound studio of amplitude apostle and great
modulator Taymur Streng was situated. Strangler held the position of house
electrician and keyboard god in various projects. One of them had the bland
alias Mahlsdorfer Wohnstuben Orchester, behind which the avant-garde court
chapel of the bungalow studio was concealed. There Taymur also conspired with
the East Berlin underground band Ornament & Verbrechen (tapetopia #001). Ronald
Lippok of Ornament & Verbrechen remembers how once, at the opening of a joint
session, he and his brother Robert attended TaymurÆs engaging slide show of his
collection of test patterns. Afterwards, they created a piece with the
psychedelic title ôDas sentimentale UfOö, which sheds an iridescent light on the
bizarre atmosphere in the studio. TaymurÆs obsession with technology was
legendary. The home studio was also his living space; a circuit, a machine park
of screwed and soldered equipment, a single keyboard orgy. His own creations
were also based on circuit diagrams found in the radio amateur magazine
ôFunkamateurö. Its somewhat clueless subtitle ôPraktische Elektronik Fu¿r Alleö
(Practical Electronics for All) was presumably not meant to include the East
Berlin underground, since the magazine was published by the GDRÆs military
publishing house and appeared under the auspices of the paramilitary
Gesellschaft fu¿r Sport und Technik (GST).
Besides ôMa¿ckiö Sauer as second organist, Taymur StrengÆs and Rene┤ GlofkeÆs
synth- pop chapter also included drummer Sven Schwebel and Ma¿ckiÆs brother Ingo
Sauer on bass. The bandÆs first tape ôWaifö was made by this line-up, and it
would remain the only one as Neuntage Alt (Nine Days Old). The name harks back
to an English nursery rhyme from the 18th century, which was widespread as a
singspiel or clapping game:
Pease porridge hot, Pease porridge cold. Pease porridge in the pot, Nine days
old. Some like it hot, Some like it cold. Some like it in the pot, Nine days
old.
All that soon remained of the original band name was an enigmatic Neuntage, with
the Alt dropped. Neuntage was played only once on ôParocktikumö, the crucial
forum for alternative music. Unlike other permanently present colleagues, the
band would never again appear in the programme of the DT-64 broadcast. This is
striking, since no other post-punk band in the GDR was blessed with such an
unconstrained and incidental understanding of melody, there was hardly any equal
in the East German underground or overground.
This lack of appreciation for the band was also apparent on the occasion of
their first ôclassificationö for a playing permit, this time, however, in an
exemplary manner and thus in conformity with the system. The jury of music
academicsÆ and cultural functionariesÆ distrust of English lyrics was rooted in
a paranoia that critical messages could remain undiscovered and hidden from
their largely untried school English. Neuntage, true to their own preferences,
set a text by John Foxx to music or extracted the essence from lyrics by Robert
Smith and reinterpreted them. However, the darkwave band chiefly used English
poems, appropriately from the ôWei▀e Reiheö (White Series), a poetry edition
published by Volk & Welt and featuring William Butler Yeates, James Joyce and
Stephen Crane, among others.
The jury was also out of its depth with the bandÆs arrangements. Neuntage
created transitions between the songs that broke the pop appeal of the concert
with experimental intros. This resulted in the juryÆs final break with the
bandÆs concept. Both correctly and incompetently, it stated that it hadnÆt heard
any beginnings or endings, and that the audience should be given the opportunity
to clap between songs. The band was given an equally unwilling and malicious
ôGrundstufeö (basic level permit), the lowest of all possible permits, which
unfortunately determined the possible ticket prices for shows. The second
classification produced a ôSonderstufeö (special level permit), but in September
1989, on the brink of the GDRÆs demise, it was no longer worth anything. The
permits did nothing to influence the frequency of live performances by Neuntage
anyway; from 1988 onwards, the band would perform frequently, also as the
opening act for Die Vision and with AG Geige.
During this period, Neuntage compiled a second tape: ôSoldierö. Sebastian Lange
from Die Vision now backed up the synthetic sound with guitar. ôSoldierö was
less intended as a concept album, even though it seemed self-contained, but
rather served, like ôWaifö, to document a creative phase. Rene┤ Glofke bought
the cassettes for the ôeditionö of less than fifty copies from Vietnamese guest
workers who, like him, worked in the VEB Kombinat Narva, the East Berlin light
bulb factory. The cover of the tape shows the shot to shreds and correspondingly
blood-stained shirt of RussiaÆs last tsar Nikolai II, whom the Bolshevik party
and state leadership had killed by a firing squad in 1918, along with the tsarÆs
entire family. Using this photo in the GDR was at least risque┤, although it was
not meant as a blatant comment on the stateÆs uptight historiography. In the
GDR, associations of this kind hardly met with understanding. In the meantime,
projections were used at Neuntage concerts that would have been unthinkable at
public performances in the mid-1980s: battle scenes with National PeopleÆs
ArmyÆs toy soldiers played out in wild cross-fades in the bandÆs back. These
ultimately harmless illustrations of the GDRÆs own militarism also went
unnoticed, the control state was slowly losing its shape.
The question of NeuntageÆs artistic shape arose at the same time. Rene┤ Glofke
played drums with the darkwave band Fellini Prostitutes, which was more acoustic
than Neuntage. To Taymur Streng, on the other hand, Neuntage didnÆt take its
minimalism far enough. He became an audionaut and would later drive his
abstractions into ever sparser soundscapes with the Kunstkopf ensemble. The
shadow play with shapes perhaps found its most direct expression in the project
L'ambassadeur des ombres, in which Neuntage and Die Vision dissolved into a dark
band hybrid. For Die Vision, the project was an offshoot, for Neuntage, on the
other hand, the name L'ambassadeur des ombres acted as a binding omen; to this
day, the band has remained largely unrecognised in the shadow of itself.