The leap that Neubauten made between their 1981 debut album, Kollaps, and its successor, Zeichnungen Des Patienten O.T., was extraordinary, not the least because they accelerated the intensity and ferocity of Kollaps while finding a new eloquence amidst their ruins. The detail is heightened and richly sensuous, even when the music’s marinating in flames, as on the brutally overloaded “Abfackeln!”; there’s a great string of compositions through the middle of the album that locate the tactile properties of scraped metal and rub them up against deep pulses, morphed tape work, and savant guitar moves; by the time of “Armenia,” Bargeld’s wounded voice is drowning in the deep melancholy of the traditional folk melody Neubauten borrow for one of their most lasting compositions. They’d subsequently make albums that cover wider terrain, or that momentarily reach greater heights, but there’s something consummate about Zeichnungen Des Patienten O.T.; the Neubauten DNA is fully imprinted here.

– Jon Dale