Cabaret Voltaire vs. Einstürzende Neubauten vs. Throbbing Gristle

I've only heard a very few late '80s tracks by Cabaret Voltaire, and I've never gotten the whole TG "thing," but I saw Neubauten four times last century (1989, 1990, 1992 and 1999) so they totally win it for me. Plus, I interviewed Blixa Bargeld once and he was hilarious and brilliant.

Own records by all three and I've ever seen any of these acts live (although I can believe that EN are by far the best) but I pull out Cabs records (and Kirk solo stuff) most frequently so I am voting for them.

Difficult one: Neubauten seem the most original on so many levels, and the most impressive and intense, but, yes, I've spent far more time actually listening to the Cabs.

TG always talked a good game, but . .

TG > CV >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> EN

the Cabs, even though their stuff hasn't aged well - for about three years, the best act on the planet imo

To be fair though, I suppose TG weren't round long enough to get boring

still deciding between cabs and gristle (I'm surprised to see the latter aren't getting more love)

I voted for the group that made me go on an iTunes bender a few months ago.

Neubauten seem the most original on so many levels

They do?

xpost: "I suppose TG weren't round long enough to get boring" - I dunno, Heathen Earth does it for me.

Genesis P-Orridge was doing some srs G.G. Allin shit onstage regularly by 1969, so I'd say the members of Throbbing Gristle were the most ahead of their time

Not really, in 1969 he was just a mildly rebellious hippy at Hull Uni.

tempted to go with CV... but my EN knowledge is seriously lacking, so maybe i shouldn't vote at all

"Neubauten seem the most original on so many levels"

Yeah I'm sure Pierre Schaeffer would agree.

unquestionably tg. on singles alone they beat both of these bands.

Ooh, toughie, but I'm going with Neubauten. The music just happens to be better.

one vote for teh wreckers of civilization.

Cabaret Voltaire

TG > CV >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> EN

― Sacco, Vanzetti, Passantino... (Tom D.), Tuesday, May 12, 2009 6:11 PM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Cabaret Voltaire: Make for the best background music (and they made a truckload of it.) Also, probably the most "rock" (as in the Seeds) of these bands. I like them a lot. If I was objective, which I'm not, I'd probably vote for them.

Throbbing Gristle: Silly novelty act. Never shocked me, which I guess was the point. But I don't hate the 14-song best-of I have by them (which has one song called "Cabaret Voltaire" on it).

Einsturzende Neubauten: Germans who banged on things; hence, they get lots of "Sprockets" points. Fun to watch on stage, unintentionally hilarious liner notes, plus "Yu Gung" was a really great single when Adrian Sherwood got to it. And they have sentimental value to me, since I was in Germany in the early '80s. They win.

TG always talked a good game, but . .

^^^this is precisely OTM, I mean, I love Genesis, but...

Of course I'm going for my beloved Cabs, though I admit I don't listen to them much anymore. No, I don't know a whole lot of Neubauten but the one album I had wasn't all that impressive outside of Yu Gung.

I have always liked the idea of Throbbing Gristle more than I've liked their actual albums.

(Chris and Cosey, OTOH, was mad dope.)

Germans who banged on things

Bahahaha. Pretty much sums it up.

Regarding Throbbing Gristle, it just strikes me that their music doesn't really stand on its own so well (y'know, outside of their conceptual gestalt, if you will), whereas even that narrowest of rock-headed slackjaw can appreciate the clangy pleasures of Neubauten.

Gotta go with Throbbing Gristle. As opposed to Alex I like that there's hardly any 'rock' in their music. It's what seals the deal for me. I don't want them to rock, I want them to, well, do what they do. Do great.

yeah all those creed fans be bumping drawings of patient OT 24/7

xp

it's a neubauten vs. gristle grudgematch for me

tg's recent comeback might inch them out in front tbh

Next poll:

SPK vs DAF vs Z'ev vs Ledernaken vs Mekanik Destructiw Komandoh vs Test Dept.

SPK vs EN vs TG would cause me serious internal debate

never really got into cab voltaire, both the early noisy stuff and later electro period seemed "okay" but never heard anything that made me love them

lol at xhuxk calling tg a novelty band then voting for the german guys who banged on metal

it's hard teasing out justifications for measuring these bands against each other because the normal yardsticks don't work

but - not voting for TG seems wrong to me, they are the led zep of noise, they covered so much ground that anybody who noised after them lives in some part of their broad shadow

also, cosey fanni tutti

I mean good lord

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/coseyfannitutti.jpg

not voting for TG seems wrong...anybody who noised after them lives in some part of their broad shadow

But Cabaret Voltaire were noising long before them, right? (As early as '74, according to a box set thing I have.)

not if you count "Early Worm," COUM Transmissions, etc

tg aren't just noise though! they write really great SONGS. they had a flawless run of singles. "distant dreams pt ii" is worth both cv and neubauten's entire back catalogues imo. they're not even in the same league as tg.

tg aren't just noise though!

Neither are CV or EN.

I haven't really given Cabaret Voltaire a shot. 20 years ago, they sounded like a bad Casio band to me. Which ones to people like?

As much as I love Throbbing Gristle, Neubauten are just more musically accomplished and have a greater body of work.

Neubauten for the win.

None of these bands are novelty acts. C'mon.

xpost: Actually, the only TG I ever liked are the big live walls o' noise. Where GPO's vocals are almost inaudible. Sorry, Gen.

CV and EN both wrote fairly tightly structured songs throughout their careers. Blixa is one of the most compelling vocalists I've ever seen.

I haven't really given Cabaret Voltaire a shot. ... Which ones to people like?

Best to start with the '78-'81 stuff (on Living Legends, Mix Up, The Voice Of America, Red Mecca, in more or less that order), then move forwards and backwards from there. The Original Sound of Sheffield '78/'82: Best Of can serve as a decent intro too. The later stuff definitely does involve into keyboard piddle like you say, but Methodology '74/'78 Attic Tapes is at least interesting from a historical perspective, not that I actually play it all the way through very often.

it seems a bit odd to take EN and TG, two bands whose raison d'etre was to create awful screeching noise, and to then say one is better than the other on the grounds of better songs or musicality

xp "does devolve into," I meant.

And yeah, my main problem with Gristle was probably P'Orridge's vocals and all his conceptual baloney, too. Just found it hard to get past all that stuff, but it's possible I never gave them the chance they deserve.

true, genesis is a love it or leave it proposition

sometimes I wonder how much of a liability blixa would be if he sang in english, neubauten lyric sheets are often o_O

Most of the Sogo Ishii "Halber Mensch" seems to be up on youtube, and it still gives me gooseflesh.

. . so I'm voting EN.

there used to be a bunch of footage from '88 at the bizarre festival w/ blixa dressed as a priest but a lot of it is gone

i always felt bad that i never warmed up to later EN albums more. i mean, blixa will always be a god to me, but i just couldn't get into them. they seemed fancier. more self-consciously arty even though they had always been arty. although in the old days they were arty in a i-haven't-slept-in-weeks-and-that's-why-my-hair-looks-like-this kinda way. i'm older now and like fancier music, so maybe i should listen fresh. and they were beautiful packages too either on vinyl or cd. stuff like haus der luge and tabula rasa.

Based on the half-dozen or so albums I own (or owned), EN > TG > CV.

(And yet the Cabs are the only ones whose LPs I still own, go figure.)

wanna rep here for my favorite cabs period, right before they signed to some bizarre - the 2x45 double 12" and the eddie's out/fools game 12" are two of the most perfect records I know. I didn't like "the crackdown" much but "sensoria" was a nice place for them to end up after that.

first cabs thing i ever bought was the drinking gasoline thing. maybe that's the double 12inch thing you speak of. i was all about kino when i heard it on the radio. wish i still had it.

he's probably talking about the double 45 release that's actually called 2x45. Drinking Gasoline is a few years later, after The Crackdown.

From the top of my head, the Cabs history breaks down like this:

pre-actual release experimental noodling which you can hear on the 1981 Industrial cassette Cabaret Voltaire 1974-1976 and Methodology 74/78

The Rough Trade period, the first half of which is very dark and lo-fi, crappy drum machines, distorted combo organs, crazy tape delay, which is covered on Mix-Up, The Voice of America, and The Living Legends, which collects the Rough Trade singles. Also Three Mantras and the Live at the YMCA album.

The later Rough Trade period had them working in a more "acoustic" manner, often with live drums, as heard on Red Mecca and 2x45. They also had some releases on Crepescule which had that organic nature, like Invocation on the Christmas album. A shockingly beautiful song!

That sound continued on the EP that was included with their next album, The Crackdown, on Some Bizarre/Virgin, but the album itself definitely showed them moving towards a more electro-funk sound, which was continued on the next few SB/Virgin releases, Microphonies, The Covenant the Sword and EPs like Drinking Gasoline and the Train Train. A lot of these I think laid the groundwork for much of what is popularly known as industrial music, like the Wax Trax stuff. Danceable beats, distorted vocals, found sound, etc.

After this, they definitely worked a bit harder to cash in and sell out, with Code as their big stab at the charts, basically not that different from what came before but better production values.

Then they jumped on the house bandwagon, though Kirk had been instrumental in the UK house scene so that's ok. I love stuff like Colours. The last few Cabs albums were during a really prolific period for Kirk where he was into really long ambient songs with tons of found vocals. Not my favorite stuff, but a lot of what Kirk was doing solo and other names during the late 80s and through the 90s I like a lot more. Sweet Exorcist, Sandoz, his Artificial Intelligence LP on Warp.

I happen to like it all, more or less, though there are definitely people who drop out after a certain release.

I think Kirk has maintained a pretty impressive degree of credibility throughout his career, even though Byron Coley called their record label Colecovision and Paul Smith said they wouldn't do a gig without a limo and some coke back when he jumped ship to start Blast First because the Cabs wouldn't sign Sonic Youth. At least, that's how I heard the story.

cabaret voltaire win this handily for me, because of three mantras and red mecca, which I find much more involving and interesting than anything TG ever did. And I like Neubauten but I need to be in the mood for most of it, and even then I think I find myself generally liking stuff like Haus der Luge more than anything else because I'm kind of a pansy about these things.

saw this poll earlier today and it's cv vs en for me.

voted cv. if coil was included, they would've gotten my vote.

(i voted cv for their 90s stuff more than anything, if anyone cares)

ditto sentiment on Coil. voted Neubauten because they had a much more profound effect on the way i went about music as a teenager. while EN could be summed up as "germans banging on metal things" pretty well, i think they went about it in a rather notable way (artistic pretentiousness aside).

i never really got into cabaret voltaire. i think i heard some of their later stuff which apparently is not as good as their earlier works, so i'm going to borrow some records and check that out.

to me, throbbing gristle is conceptually heavier than neubauten, and a lot of the noiser music i listen to would seem to be more influenced by TG than EN. i think i prefer the texture of EN to the emotion of TG.

I think Voice of America is the only CV I've heard. Thanks Chuck & Dan for illuminating.

easy : cabaret voltaire.
i love the Virgin years stuff.
i tried the earlier Rough Trade stuff, but found it just too bleak/lo-fi given that i had already succumbed to the more polished sounds of Crackdown.
admittedly, the house era didn't really do much for me (recently underlined with the purchase of Remixed which compiles several remixes from the Groovy, Laidback .. era, and has yet to really hit home).
I would also suggest that RHKs solo stuff, and the new album he's released under the CV name, contains some of the best examples of dubbed up ambient techno.

TG. Also SB.

Neubauten, easy. Although, to be fair, I think one has to have seen them live to properly love them. Recent stuff is kinda boring but their shows are still rad.

Also, "Armenia"

Sneaking suspicion TG will win this through lurker vote. I got a bad record with these sort of predictions, but let's see what happens.

TG made waaay more interesting, primal, defining noize than either of the other guys. All of them had some legitimately solid songs but is that the defining criteria? Even if it is, 20 Jazz Funk Greats and stuff like Distant Dreams Pt II as mentioned above still cover it. And those TG Pop Songs are just way more compelling and subversive.

Plus, TG is THE noise icon. For good reason I would say. Something has to be said for that.

well i didn't say it was the defining criteria, it's just something that is rarely brought up in these discussions. tg were so much more than just noise.

not putting that on you, i'm totally with you on that.

i mean, i think they did the most interesting stuff in both directions

Nag Nag Nag is my favourite song by any of these bands which might be enough to make me go for Cabaret Voltaire. Otherwise this is hard! Although I also own more CV than either of the other 2.

I was sure this was gonna be a two dog race with cab voltaire as the also-ran, but people really dig 'em. huh.

thanks dan for the CV CV, I'm gonna have to give them another shot.

Went TG, although Nag Nag Nag is so good my band covered it and last.fm sez I listen to way more CV than TG. Both streets ahead of EN.

although Nag Nag Nag is so good my band covered it

Well that's convincing.

Not an easy choice at all but Gristle was the first off my list, largely for reasons already spelled out above: Gen can be very annoying, and the other bands just had more breadth. Which isn't to say I dislike Gristle...they're still great.

I have to side with the Cabs here because I love something from almost every period they have. I came in on the Virgin/Some Bizzare years and loved them (I'll rep for Covenant Sword and the Arm of the Lord any day), but the earlier stuff is amazing too. Even their later period techno stuff had its moments, but Groovy Laidback and Nasty was poop no matter how you slice it so points off there.

Reducing Neubauten to "they pounded on things"is like reducing Zep to "they played the blues really loud" - technically true but it doesn't capture anywhere near the breadth that the band offered. Halber Mensch featured a lot of banging but it also helped pave the way for the electro-industrial bands like NIN among other things...later work got quieter and far more musical. But points off for some pretty dire lyrics that suffered from their artschool pretensions, occasionally. Again, not to say I don't love 'em.

And yeah, John's talking about the one entitled 2x45...was their only double 45'er to come out earlier. Drinking Gasoline and Drain Train came out later.

All of these bands could be accused of lyrical pretentiousness, but I like the fact that Blixa seems to have read a bit more widely than just a bit of Burroughs and a whole lot of Colin Wilson. Plus, the German language has a lot of wild sounds that don't occur in English, and Blixa works every one of them like a demon.

Search for Blixa's ads for a German department store on YouTube, awesome stuff.

went with TG, their first three records are pretty much unstoppable

EN, no question. Love the big weird sound of pounding under freeways. I've come around to more CV and TG as time goes on, but I can still remember the first time I heard EN—my disaffected art school cousin smoking unfiltered Camel Wides in my gramma's basement, making "art" out of layers and layers of electrical tape on canvas. I realize now how ridiculous it was, him all dressed in black with a little boombox blaring, but it really stuck with me, and I couldn't get enough of Collaps. I had that tape for years.

Cabaret Voltaire -> dancea·bili·ty [& giving album covers THE FACE design
Einstürzende Neubauten = Blixa; dont like personality cult past the 70s]

Cabaret Voltaire -> dancea·bili·ty [& giving album covers THE FACE design

Other way around!

oh?

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=72288#unread

although Nag Nag Nag is so good my band covered it

Well that's convincing.

― I just wish he hadn't adopted the "ilxor" moniker (ilxor), Wednesday, May 13, 2009 1:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Torn between providing the link to prostitute myself and not mentioning it at all, went for a middle ground and sounded retarded instead.

I was going to say that Neville Brody was doing Cabaret Voltaire sleeves before the Face but I looked it up and The Face started in 81 while 2x45 was 82, so perhaps I'm wrong! His work with Fetish goes back to 80 or so though.

Torn between providing the link to prostitute myself and not mentioning it at all

Link! Yay!

so perhaps I'm wrong!

probably not, i think Face changed their design around 84', which fits your description.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

EN lyrics are really really really good in German, Blixa's translations are typical "I am such a genius I can be clever in ze primitive language of ze American cowboys" awfulness.

tossup between neubauten and gristle, but if we're only talking about early cabs (which is fantastic stuff), that makes the choice even harder. think i'll vote neubauten for sentimental reasons.

also, TG's gonna win this because of all the coachella indie-come-latelies

I finally voted for Cabs.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

surprised by these results! I voted EN.

disappointed

Nice to see a strong showing for the Cabs, though I went for EN after much soul-searching.

also, TG's gonna win this because of all the coachella indie-come-latelies
also, TG's gonna win this because of all the coachella indie-come-latelies
also, TG's gonna win this because of all the coachella indie-come-latelies
also, TG's gonna win this because of all the coachella indie-come-latelies
also, TG's gonna win this because of all the coachella indie-come-latelies

― elliot easton ellis (get bent), Monday, May 18, 2009 6:18 AM (16 hours ago) Bookmark

Mildly surprised.

EN won because they have the most interesting and long-term career, with no embarrassments or major gaps to speak of. That will win you fans!

i'm pleasantly surprised by this outcome!

Wow, really surprised and disappointed how poorly TG faired here. I am also apparently terrible at predicting the outcome of polls.