Einstürzende Neubauten have long made a career of taking a wrecking ball to the staid towers of musical convention. Their seminal industrial excess having become a musical institution in Germany--aligning them somewhat to the left of Kraftwerk and Can--they turn the wrecking ball on themselves on Silence Is Sexy. Employing aural texture, murmurs, hushed vocals, and, yes, silence, instead of the Sturm und Drang of collapsing buildings, monstrous machinery, and industrial decay, Silence defies all preconceived notions of what an Einstürzende Neubauten album should sound like. The title track manages to imbue long patches of complete silence with a backbeat and groove, proving their titular claim. Blixa Bargeld--perhaps having learned a thing or two about terrible beauty from his work with Nick Cave--imbues his deep-toned vocals with warmth and emotion, and while at moments the music can careen out of control, for the most part it wavers on the lower fringes of the sonic spectrum. Now that the sonic ceiling has been shattered, perhaps EN want to prove the complexity of silence. Ah, but not for long! Accompanying Silence Is Sexy is a second disc featuring the single, seemingly unending composition "Pelikonal," an improvised duet between a repeated vocal phrase and a drill--not much more pleasant than getting root canal. Yikes. --Tod Nelson
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