After only taking 6 months off from their previous tour, post-punk/gothic-rock pioneers Bauhaus have announced a one-off show at London’s Brixton Academy for August 19th. Tickets go on sale this tomorrow (Friday 6th May) here.
If there is one thing that can almost be taken as a silver lining for lockdown, it’s the fact that lots of people that were fortunate enough to be unaffected had a lot of time indoors. That meant that the whole creative arts industry pretty much had a free holiday, and many great things came out of it. Charli XCX’s what I’m feeling now stands out as one of the ‘Lockdown Greats’ in my opinion. Also, last month, Bauhaus released the new song ‘Drink The New Wine’ which was recorded last year with the four members sharing audio files. The track employs the Surrealists’ ‘Exquisite Corpse’ device whereby each artist adds to the piece without seeing what the others have done. You can hear the track below.
Bauhaus have used this ‘exquisite corpse’ technique in the past to great effect. The title refers to the very first ‘Cadavre exquis’ drawing rendered by André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Prévert and Yves Tanguy which included words which when strung together made up the sentence, ‘Le cadavre exquis boiara le vin nouveau’ (‘The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine.’)
For the recording, the four musicians each had one minute and eight tracks at their disposal plus a shared sixty seconds plus four tracks for a composite at the end. All done without hearing what the others had laid down. The only common link being a pre-recorded beat courtesy of Kevin. The final playback came as a synchronistic revelation. This process makes it very easy to create completely nonsensical music. It happened quite regularly in the past with poetry, the Parisian Surrealist Movement really introduced some interesting specimens from poets like André Breton. But hearing this technique in a popular music format seems to be taking on new ground.
The Brixton date comes in the middle of an extensive US tour the band are soon due to begin. So, if you’re desperate for a little Bauhaus and don’t manage to bag a ticket, then you can either plan yourself a nice trip to the states or head to mainland Europe for one of their festival sets. They are appearing at the now-famous Primavera Sound 2022 alongside many of the biggest names in music today; The Strokes, Gorillaz, Jorja Smith, Disclosure, and many many others.
Photo credit: Gary Bandfield
