Strategies Against Architecture IV

Complementing the original Strategies collection, this double-disc affair covers the years 1984 to 1990, featuring the noted Bargeld/Unruh/Einheit/Chung/Hacke lineup of the group. With an informative, witty booklet providing a slew of pictures and complete liner notes for each track, Architecture II focuses on the band´s continued rude creative health through the rest of the decade, inventing and perfecting a wide variety of approaches that would help define industrial music. Power tools and heavy machinery still get used and abused throughout, Bargeld´s vocals remain in extremis screeching or nervy, unsettlingly calm semi-crooning, both loud and soft tracks appear with regularity. It´s abrasive and strangely beautiful at its best, art music via studio manipulation turned into gripping aural entertainment.