Variations on a Theme: Tower of Babel, Part 2

     To return to the theme of the Tower of Babel, I thought I would move from Fritz Lang's take on the story in Metropolis to Einsturzende Neubauten's take on the story in their song, Der Schacht von Babel (The shaft of Babel), contained on the 1996 album, Ende Neu.  The album constituted a number of shifts within the band, most notably the exodus of long-time member, F.M. Einheit.  The nature of the shifts was implicitly contained in the name of the album Ende Neue ('Ending New').  However, the record itself constituted less of a radical break than the album title might imply.  There is continuation of the shift away from the focus on transgression through noise to a more deliberate and focused exploration of sound, more complex compositional structures, and an interest in song, but songs such as 'Was Ist Ist' continued to gesture towards the transgressive history of the avant garde.  (Although, it is important to note that each of these references is exploration of the history of the avant garde.... a distinct shift from the annee zero approach of the previous work.)

     Returning to the band's engagement with the Tower of Babel, Der Schacht von Babel operates within the more meditative approach taken by the band, although there are some similarities with the re-appropriation of the folks song, Der Stuhl in der Hoelle.

     Both operate through the use of percussion, bass, and voice, and more specifically, simple and repetitive lyrics.  Those qualities are immediately apparent in the lyrics.

Wir graben den Schacht in der Abenddämmerung
Wir graben den Schacht von Babel
Zu hoch war bis jetzt unser Aussichtspunkt
Wri graben den Schacht von Babel
Mit Hölzern, sehr edel, verschalen wir ihn
Wir schachten den Tunnel von Babel
Selbst Strom für das Licht den verlegen wir drin
Wir schachten den Tunnel von Babel
Draussen das Fest erreicht den Höhepunkt
Wir graben den Schacht von Babel

We're digging the shaft of Babel
Our viewpoint was too high before
We're digging the shaft of Babel
With wood, most rare, we line it
We're mining the tunnel of Babel
We even lay out electricity for the lights in the pit
We're mining the tunnel of Babel
Outside the festivities are coming to a peak
We're digging the shaft of Babel
(Lyrics were taken from here.)

     Moving out of the specifically formal qualities of the song, the band presents the construction of Babel as the construction of a tunnel shaft, rather than a tower.  The shaft doubles as a site for the extraction of resources as well as an artifact in itself, one that is to be lined with the 'most rare' wood and supplied with electricity.  These activities are linked to a series of outside festivities, which are linked to the transgressive construction of the tower.  I think that its significant that the song takes on a similar form as the earlier exploration of the folk song.  Both seem to be gesturing towards the need to rethink the folk form to engage with the legacy of industrialization.  This shift isn't new for folk music, after all, the music of the 1920's and 1930's captured the rhythm of the locomotive and the drive of the assembly line.  This new exploration is engaged with the ruins of that earlier formation, capturing its rust and decay through the long history of the gothic.  Simultaneously, it demands that we understand our present moment as defined by the transgressive history of the avant-garde, a history that is intimately linked to the history of industrial production, and more specifically, its legacy of environmental destruction.  The orgiastic pagan celebration embraced by the avant-garde is linked dialectically with the construction of the mine shaft, the extraction of resources from the earth.  The modified folk form is crucial to exploring avant-garde transgression as legacy, rather than present, to recognizing its present as a form of ruins, which is available as the grounds for some new formation, but is no longer viable in and of itself.  The transgression of Babel then stands in for the combined history of the avant-garde and industrialization, the drive for the new, which the title of the album declares over.  The song and Neubaten's work in general doesn't seem to point to a solution, an escape from the labyrinth of ruins that make up the physical and ideological landscape of late capitalism, but they seem to gesture towards the importance of exploring this transgressive trace contained in its history, which is also the history of the mine-worker, the most direct analogy to Marx's metaphor for the history of the proletariat, the mole itself.