Biography
Gristly and cantankerous faux Neue Deutsche Welle sturm und drang (geniale dilettanten variety) kicked up by two snarky teen rogues from L.A. intent on conning the sub-underground (apparently successfully) into believing that they were a legit NDW outfit, having secured releases under this ruse with two notable cassette imprints of the era. That one of said teens was in fact a barely post-pubescent Brad Laner (Steaming Coils, Savage Republic, Medicine, Electric Company) shifts Stahlbau from merely being an amusing subcultural anecdote to a historical artifact of some heft, chronicling the birth pangs of Laner's fried sensibility en route to his life changing work with Steaming Coils some 2-3 years later, nascent flashes of which flicker during some of the most compelling moments here, particularly on Die Macht Der Reichen. Throbbing Gristle seems as much of an influence here as do the likes of Einsturzende Neubauten, especially on Tödlich Verunglückt, which starts with fangs bared but midway through begins tapping into a richer vein of juddering surrealism and art rock fragmentation before winding down with a cover of Can's "Soul Desert". Die Macht Der Reichen ups the stakes and widens the reach substantially, with scrambled art punk gestures gasping for breath in turbid pools of post-industrial sediment, sooty side steps into tenebrous ambience and stark bursts of electronic fizzle and splut all competing for airtime. Stahlbau's other member Mike Fey (a teen music guru to Brad and a member of Debt Of Nature's second line-up) penned a fake interview with himself in the guise of Stahlbau's Matthias Faller (Brad was known as Bernd Leitz) for the L.A. underground zine Unsound, which Brad also used to write for.
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