To play catch up from last week’s missed mix, I’m giving you two once again. They’re timely with their themes, the first being all German artists and the second being songs about war. In fact, in many ways these two themes are inextricably linked. As everyone celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down, it inevitably brings Berlin’s extraordinary history, along with Germany’s more generally, back into the spotlight. And Cold War is war after all.
I’ve written about how much I love Berlin here before, and it still remains one of my top cities in the world. It was the hub around which so many ideologies and political agendas marched in the twentieth century. And that surreal wall and its solid representation of clashing ideologies will continue to inspire art. That sense of artistic freedom amidst continual opposition is also something so characteristic of Berlin. Additionally, I’m just generally interested in German history as a whole, having taken courses in university and having read several books on the subject. For a country that was historically impossible to unify, the “reunification” in 1989 was made all the more poignant. It’s definitely more complex than that and far more fraught than the fireworks and celebratory dominoes would have you believe, but I think it’s far preferable to that absurd division.
Germany will always be significant to me because that’s where my dad is from, and thus, where half of my family background lies. I’ve visited Germany twice in my life, and fully intend to do so again in the near future. And as a music fan, I can’t ignore Germany’s contribution to the electronic/experimental scene. It’s also rather fortuitous that I just viewed a BBC documentary on Krautrock a couple of weeks ago; it was actually pretty informative since I only had vague ideas of that particular music scene. I knew about Can, Neu!, Faust, Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk, but never really stopped to think about the motivation behind that kind of experimentalism. In post-war Germany, young people were trying to make sense of the past while distancing themselves from both it and an increasingly Anglo-American present. The result was a truly revolutionary vision of music that continues to influence electronic music today; of course it also influenced musicians contemporary with them – through that documentary, I discovered that Brian Eno had gone to visit Harmonia (which included members of Neu! and Cluster), taping them before working with Bowie on those Berlin albums.
So, this mix includes several of those early bands, but also some much more current ones, and a few unique ones in between, like Nina Hagen and Klaus Nomi. This one’s called Die Mauer Wird Fallen.
Der Räuber und der Prinz – DAF
Pogo (The Horrors remix) – Digitalism
Jeffer (Modeselektor Remix) – Boys Noize
Mother Sky (Pilooski Edit) – Can
Happy Go Lucky – Polarkreis 18
Tag für Tag – Xmal Deutschland
Michail Michail (Gorbachev Rap) – Nina Hagen
Steh auf Berlin – Einstürzende Neubauten
I don’t think my views have changed much since last year’s Remembrance Day post. I find all of the pomp and circumstance surrounding the day to be a bit hollow. Yes, my grandfather died in World War II, but to wear a poppy and have a moment of silence once a year doesn’t mean much when armed conflict just goes on and on around the world. Remembrance Day becomes a superficial day of reassurance – the reality of war can be painted away with the ennobling brush. Soldiers aren’t victims of the decisions of those in power, whose deaths were in vain, they’re sacrifices for a noble cause. Noble causes that continue on in places we have no business being in anyway. War is a commerical enterprise with expendable losses. We valorize to cope. This one’s called War Inc.
The Intense Humming of Evil – Manic Street Preachers
He’d Send in the Army – Gang of Four
When Ya Get Drafted – Dead Kennedys
Melancholy Soliders – The Skids
Radio Free Europe (Original Hib-Tone Single) – R.E.M.
Missiles (BBC Session) – The Sound
Poppy Day – Siouxsie and the Banshees
My Youngest Son Came Home – Billy Bragg
Shipbuilding – Elvis Costello & the Attractions
Voir un ami pleurer – Jacques Brel
CONDEMNED TO ROCK 'N ROLL 
I’m so glad you picked something by The Sound. They were/are one of music’s lost, great bands. They came from the same musical space as Joy Division in the late 70s, although their lead singer, Adrian Borland, later cited New Order as an influence himself.
Their first two albums in particular are excellent (“Jeopardy” and “From the lion’s mouth”). Both were both released on Korova, the same label as Echo & the Bunnymen, perhaps the only other band with whom you could make a comparison. Both those early albums received enormous critical acclaim at the time but for whatever reason the band never really followed up on it.
I saw them live at Rafters in Manchester in about 1980-81 and they really were stunning live. Every bit as powerful as the Bunnymen or Joy Division.
The really sad part of this is that the subsequent lack of commercial success and recognition took its toll in the worst possible way. After suffering from severe depression for more than a decade, Adrian Borland committed suicide in 1999.
A real loss to music.