"Einstürzende Neubauten, Blixa Bargeld, Alexander Hacke, N. U. Unruh, Jochen Arbeit and Rudi Moser, release their new studio album, "Perpetuum Mobile" on 9th February 2004, the first album release since 2000's "Silence Is Sexy".

"Perpetuum Mobile" tells of changes: flux, movement, and transit. In it are a number of catastrophes and rushing natural forces – tornadoes, tsunamis, tidal waves; a pandemonium of catastrophes that accompany the flight movements. Own catastrophes and alien ones, ones that were experienced and others that were stage-managed, ones that were suffered and others that are overdrawn with the help of literary devices.

For the album, the band have used a novel and unusual production approach. Webcams were installed at the Neubauten studio in Berlin to transmit the entire creative process via the Internet on their homepage, www.neubauten.org. Fans were granted access to the site, guaranteeing the financial independence of the production, and at fixed times they had the opportunity to watch the creative process live and to send their comments live to the band. All the sessions broadcast – and later also the rough mix versions – are filed in an archive that is still available online. There were a number of tracks, says Blixa Bargeld, that the band would have abandoned after a few attempts, but continued to work on because the supporters insisted on their completion.

Blixa Bargeld describes one constant theme on the album: "There’s not one single track which doesn’t talk about the wind, the storm – where it isn’t mentioned explicitly, you can at least hear it." The theme pops up not only in the lyrics ("Ein leichtes Säuseln"; "Boreas" – in Greek mythology the god of the northern winds), it wafts through the songs in the sound of three air compressors: "So there’s a little less metal, a little more air ..." (Blixa Bargeld). The compressors turn various pipes into a veritable horn section, create sub-bass sounds, produce the big flood in "Ozean und Brandung". In its popular metaphorical guise, the wind marks change, the fleeting, the non-tangible and imponderable. It is animated substancelessness, yet it has the inherent power of moving others – through erosion, through its songs.

Einstürzende Neubauten still occupy that space between "Ende" (End) and "Neu" (New), still draw their creative energy from the constant and contradictory reinvention of their own position, from the oscillation between the extremes. Infinitely much has been said since their foundation in 1980 about the delirious moment of sound descending, the self-relinquishment, about the principle of the machine, about the sound of materials, about their incessant refusal to become part of any kind of mainstream. They resemble an erratic block in the cultural landscape that unwaveringly refuses to make concessions to trends. We trust in them because they remain faithful to themselves, especially in their constant metamorphosis. An updated route map for change is now available in the shape of "Perpetuum Mobile", which not only reflects once more all the familiar aspects of the band but also introduces astonishingly new ones.

Einstürzende Neubauten play a rare UK live show at The Forum, London on 3rd April 2004"