A male voice that might best be described as “sweaty†growls urgently in German over malevolently churning synth riffs. A Kraftwerk-goes-to-kindergarten groove bounces happily behind five teenage girls singing sprightly in unison about a dreamy dude from outer space. Brain-pounding percussion and literal screams are accompanied by what could easily be the sounds of an auto assembly line.
Sonically speaking, D.A.F., Die Doraus & Die Marinas, and Einsturzende Neubauten, respectively, could have come from different solar systems. But they shared one thing: They were all part of the Neue Deutsche Welle (New German Wave).
In the late ‘70s, British and American post-punk pioneers were building new worlds from the rubble that first-gen punk left strewn in its wake. Young bands in Berlin, Hamburg, and Dusseldorf started getting in on the action too, but they were also picking up on krautrock revolutionaries like Neu! and Kraftwerk. Next thing you knew, out popped a bold new paradigm. Preeminent krautrock producer Conny Plank completed the circuit when he wound up overseeing records by German new-schoolers like D.A.F., Rheingold, and Ideal.
Crucially, the NDW generation also reclaimed their national identity, insisting on German-language lyrics and band names. This was revolutionary at a time when almost every German act, from hard rockers to MOR poppers, was courting Anglo acceptance. There was an edginess to the movement that went beyond anything happening in the UK or U.S. post-punk scenes, a sociopolitical frisson that could only exist in a country still living in the barbed-wire shadow of the Berlin Wall.
NDW artists fell into multiple camps. For starters, there were the synth jockeys (Pyrolator, Liaisons Dangereuses, Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft), the industrial saboteurs (Einsturzende Neubauten, Die Todliche Doris, Die Krupps), and the art-damaged punk-funk-ateers (Palais Schaumburg, Flucht Nach Vorn, ExKurs).
The ad hoc movement’s tent poles were pitched pretty widely, allowing plenty of room to move. Der Plan, known for their creepy, subversive sounds and bizarre costumes, probably never imagined themselves to be peers of gleefully goofy, tuneful indie pop teens Die Doraus & Die Marinas, but fans of the scene found room in their hearts for both and everything in between.
In the beginning, the sounds were spread through DIY labels and record shops, sometimes run by the artists themselves. In 1979 journalist and future film producer Klaus Maeck opened Hamburg punk record shop/distributor Rip Off Records (followed in ‘82 by his Supermax label). Kurt Dahlke (D.A.F., Pyrolator, Der Plan) founded the influential Ata Tak label in 1980. Peter Hein of Fehlfarben started Welt-Rekord that same year. Producer/visual artist Norbert Wehner debuted his Das Büro label in ‘81.
Probably most important of all was Zickzack Records, established by music journalist Alfred Hilsberg in 1980 and still active today. Depending on which source you trust, the term Neue Deutsche Welle was originated either by Hilsberg in his 1979 Sounds article “Aus grauer Städte Mauern†[From Grey Cities’ Walls]; by Dutch radio host Frits Spits, whose show on Netherlands station Hilversum 3 was big in Germany; or by Zensor Records founder Burkhardt Seiler in his Berlin shop.
What began as a buzz in Germany’s hipster havens soon made its way aboveground. Hilsberg would later tell Vice: “The fans were ripping the stuff out of our hands, and that was without any marketing. Journalists were following us, not the other way round.â€
Inevitably, the big labels started paying attention, and Deutsche marks started flashing before their eyes. Some of the majors snapped up first-wave NDW bands, while others bet big on the increasingly commercial variants that were emerging. In the mid-’80s, the scene began losing its edge as international crowd-pleasers like Nena’s 1983 “99 Luftballons†and Trio’s “Da Da Da†led things down a poppier path.
“The people weren’t buying anything innovative or difficult anymore,†said Hilsberg. By the time Hamburg-based Taco scored an international hit in 1983 with a deadpan synth-pop makeover of American standard “Puttin’ on the Ritz,†the bloom was off the proverbial rose. Some people would even come to dub the scene’s late ‘70s/early ‘80s heyday ONDW (Original Neue Deutsche Welle) to distinguish it from its more accessible offspring.
Let’s look back at some records that represent the Teutonic tidal wave of Neue Deutsche Welle in its eccentric, eclectic prime.
Pyrolator
Inland
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
If there were an NDW crossword puzzle, every other answer could be Kurt Dahlke. He played in three key bands (D.A.F., Der Plan, and Fehlfarben) in addition to running the hugely influential Ata Tak label, but his work as Pyrolator represents his most personal vision. When Dahlke worked with other artists, his offbeat electronics were what he brought to the table; with Pyrolator they are the table, not to mention the chairs, plates, and cutlery. The first Pyrolator album, 1979’s Inland, showed that Dahlke’s moves were multifold—sometimes harsh and noisy, sometimes ambient and evocative; melodic and rhythmic one moment and utterly abstract the next. The follow-up would dive convincingly into conventional song structures with vocals, but Inland was the electronic alarm alerting the world that something new was happening.
Einsturzende Neubauten
2×4
Einsturzende Neubauten is to German industrial music as the Big Bang is to the Milky Way. A lot of their peers incorporated the industrial concept, but Neubauten embodied it. Long before EN foreman Blixa Bargeld became the Lenny to Nick Cave’s Squiggy, he and his Berlin crew were hammering out some of the harshest, hardest sounds ever committed to vinyl. Their roots in the NDW community ran deep, and their ideas spread across Germany and beyond through their extended musical family. The band, whose name means “collapsing new buildings,†literally made music with power tools and construction materials at first. Their palette began expanding a little during the period captured by this live collection, but there’s still loads of that factory-floor clang and bang to be found. This may be the only band that makes The Stooges sound like The Archies.
Malaria!
Compiled 1981-84
Gudrun Gut and Bettina Koster played with distaff post-punks Mania D. and ran Berlin punk clothing shop Eisengrau, an NDW hotspot that spawned a cassette-only label of its own. They amped things up even further by forming the all-female band Malaria! with members of Die Haut, Nina Hagen’s O.U.T., and NYC no-wavers The Static. Their music merged lo-fi electronics, arch-experimentalism, a dash of industrial chaos, and a twisted, almost macabre take on dance music. Two decades after their single “Kaltes Klares Wasser†came out, electroclash avatars Chicks on Speed released a cover that became a German hit, bringing things full circle in some weird way.
Palais Schaumburg
Palais Schaumburg (Deluxe Edition)
2 x Vinyl LP
Palais Schaumburg was the seat of West German government until the late ‘70s. The Hamburg band that adopted its name had some qualities in common with their British contemporaries The Pop Group: manic but arty post-punk intensity and a fondness for warping funk grooves and dub techniques to fit their freaky mindset. Produced by Flying Lizards leader David Cunningham, the 1981 debut album’s synth-slathered strangeness and largely guitar-less post-rock attack foreshadow the renowned electronic sounds that members Holger Hiller, Thomas Fehlmann, and subsequent addition Moritz von Oswald would each eventually forge on their own.
Die Doraus & Die Marinas
Blumen und Narzissen
Vinyl LP
“Fred vom Jupiter†was created as a high school project by Hamburg student Andreas Dorau, who enlisted some of his female classmates for vocal assistance. The perky teen tune about a visitor from Jupiter who makes women swoon was an irresistible blend of synth-pop and schlager (mainstream German pop), and it became a bona fide hit. Kurt Dahlke showed the kid some recording basics and the former’s Ata Tak label released a 1981 album of Dorau and company’s engagingly nerdy Jonathan Richman/Bananarama/Kraftwerk stew. The LP was soon picked up in England by Mute Records—and right about here is where people outside the NDW underground began getting big ideas about the music’s marketability.
Grauzone
Grauzone
2 x Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD), Vinyl
Grauzone was only around long enough to cut one album and play a handful of gigs. But, like a nuclear warhead, they didn’t need much time to make an impact. Though Swiss, they’ve always been considered part of the NDW. Their name (Grey Area) and lyrics were German, and they made a major splash in West Germany, both in the underground and, surprisingly, on the mainstream charts. On their only album, brutal minimalism, goth-y post-punk, and dark synth sculptures batter down the doors of complacency. At times it seems like their brief was “Joy Divison but less cuddly.†The foreboding “Eisbär†became an unlikely pop hit in Germany and maintained a long enough tail to be covered and sampled by multiple bands decades after Grauzone closed up shop.
D.A.F.
Ein Produkt der Deutsch-Amerikanischen Freundschaft
Vinyl LP
The version of Deutsche Amerikanische Freundschaft the world knows best is the vocals/electronics duo that emerged in the ‘80s with a stripped-down, fiercely rhythmic sound that became known as Electronic Body Music, resembling what might have happened if Suicide was launched in Dusseldorf instead of NYC. But D.A.F.’s 1979 debut (which vexingly spells their name differently than the rest of their records) was another affair entirely. It’s an all-instrumental record that adds an industrial edge to assaultive post-punk. Kurt Dahlke’s electronics take a back seat to lacerating guitar riffs that skirt the edge of tonality and drums that seem to answer the question, “What if John Bonham recorded exclusively from the inside of a metal silo?â€
Der Plan
Normalette Surprise
The party line on this batch of Berlin weirdos has always been that they were like The Residents’ brothers from a German mother. Looking back, that rep still resonates, from the twisted vocal delivery and electronic derangements to their tendency to perform in outlandish outfits and freaky masks. Der Plan’s 1981 album Normalette Surprise is slightly less insane than their ‘79 debut, but not by much. Even when they lock into a straight-ahead post-punk groove or Eurodisco-adjacent synth pattern, they’re bound to subvert it with some drastic detour before the track is over. Expect the unexpected.
Xmal Deutschland
Early Singles (1981-1982)
Vinyl LP, Cassette, Compact Disc (CD)
Singer Anja Huwe was working in Hamburg record shop/punk hub Rip Off Records when she formed a band with some of the kindred spirits she met there. The all-female Xmal Deutschland was intensely enmeshed in the burgeoning NDW community, hanging with Einsturzende Neubauten and the like. But it was in England that they scored a deal with 4AD and released the engagingly doomy debut LP that earned them the eldritch embrace of the British goth crowd. The Early Singles collects the tracks they unleashed through ZickZack before becoming internationalists. Foregrounded electronic elements lend the band’s post-punk glower power more of a darkwave synth vibe than the goth-friendly sounds that would later endear the band to black-clad Brits.
Liaisons Dangereuses
Liaisons Dangereuses
The electro-minimalist sounds that early D.A.F. members Beate Bartel and Chrislo Haas cooked up as Liaisons Dangereuses in Dusseldorf (don’t be misled by the French band name) are spiritual kin to what D.A.F. was up to at the time. But where D.A.F.’s rhythms were coming from more of a rock headspace, Liaisons Dangereuses made a skewed, saturnine sort of dance music. Adding vocalist Krishna Goineau and recording at krautrock king Conny Plank’s studio, they concocted bottom-heavy, sequencer-driven sounds laying the groundwork for legions of artists all along the electronic/industrial spectrum, from Nitzer Ebb and Front Line Assembly to Ministry and Nine Inch Nails. Liaisons Dangereuses only lasted for one album—the intensity of their music may have been impossible to contain for much longer.
