Which albums are particularly worthwhile, which are not? Click here for the Bauhaus check!
“The bats left the bell tower,” says Peter Murphy in his legendary mourning song for Dracula actor Bela Lugosi. Where are the animals? In the musical world of Bauhaus, the band that made Goth-Rock what it can be in the best case: a dark music in which the urge to express and isolation is dialectically combined. With their discography, the Bauhaus people also lay their role models: Bowie and Iggy Pop, Glamrock and Soul, Marlene Dietrich and Edgar Allan Poe.
Recommendations of the editorial team
What you need
In the Flat Field (1980)
With their paranoid claust trophobic interpretation of Postpunk, Siouxsie & The Banshees, The Birthday Party and Joy Division opened the doors to a dark room, then come Bauhaus and occupy it. Absolutely noteworthy that the band instinctively knows what is important in the Gothic rock; The debut in the Flat Field is the blueprint of a style that only changes to the half -dead Persiflage a few years later, bundles the power of the postpunk and transferred to the darkest realms. “Double Dare” borrows “Double Dare” lends “Double Dare” the industrial tribal drums of Joy Divisions “Atrocity Exhibition”, unlike Ian Curtis Exhibition “, unlike Ian Curtis Exhibition”, Peter Murphy Extrovert, like a skirt singer, like Jim Morrison. The basis of the song is a doom-riget, then guitarist Daniel Ash ash is the wildest e-ect, the music is at the same time physical and psychedelic-the soundtrack for a young goth generation that can be clearly recognized and, as it were, escapes into your own world. Goths are the dialectics among youth cultures, and Bauhaus understand this attitude. They play “The Spy in the Cab”, which can only be heard sensibly if the despair creeps up your own four walls. But also the party track “St. Vitus Dance”, as made for black happings.
Five stars
Mask (1981)
A year later – and Bauhaus play pop and even disco! “The Passion of Lovers” has an exuberant chorus and clear structures, but the single did not become a hit, the beat is too hectic for that. “Of Lillies and Remains” sounds like Ian Dury at “The Spy in the Cab” the Edgar-Allan-Poe Festival. The highlight is the piece “Kick in the Eye”, which would have been the perfect template for David Bowie to get Groovy and dodgy through the 80s at the same time. A year later, Bauhaus “Ziggy Stardust” covers the love from Bauhaus to Bowie, but remained rather unrequited from it, the band and superstar only came close to the set for the film “Desire”: Bauhaus play in a scene, when catering, Bowie gives fire.
Four and a half stars
Peter Murphy: Deep (1989)
The third solo album of the Bauhaus singer-and suddenly he is a pop star. At least for temporary time. It is the years when Iggy Pop Bubblegum plates takes up and many of his fans believe that Peter Murphy was able to do the songs that would actually look good on her hero. “Deep Ocean -Vast Sea”, for example. It is also interesting that the guy from Northampton on Deep is showing an American accent that almost reminds of Stan Ridgway’s chewing gumglisch-but so that the album is successful in the United States, the singles are running on MTV, above all “cuts you up”, which could also come from the go-betewees with its beautiful cello melody. And Murphy can be even more romantic: “Marlene Dietrich’s Favourite Poem” tells of the shy actress, who only felt comfortable apart from the film sets when she read her favorite poems.
Four and a half stars
Gothic – how it all started
The Bela Session (2018)
9:36 minutes. Hardcore fans of the piece-and there are many of them-experience the same as intensely every moment of the brocken, the drummer’s faded rims, the guitar of Daniel Ash, which seems to be able to set the life of an insect colony, the melodic but undisclosed bass run, after almost three minutes, then the dead grave voice of Peter Murphy: “White on White Translucent Black Capes, Back on the Rack. At the beginning of 1979 Bauhaus took up this study of what Gothic can and will be. The sessions are legendary because the basic coordinates of the genre are laid here. In addition to “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” (the interest of the life and dying of the Hungarian horror actor have Bauhaus together with a young guy from Spandau), the mini-album The Bela Session offers four shorter tracks in which the punk still lives and the Bauhaus shows as very well-established band, which can come to the point even without anytime.
Five stars
Other offshoots
Dalis Car: The Waking Hour (1984)
Bauhaus are at the end, at the same time bassist Mick Karn leaves the band Japan – and his idea of creating a project together, Peter Murphy likes. The Waking Hour remains the only album, if you hear it, it has to be aware of how pop bass in 1984 sounded: played on Fretless instruments, directly into the mixer. The tones lie above the overall sound as if a penetrating bumblebee had once again scanned the mix. The drums also come from the computer, there are hardly any guitars, the synthes imitated Arab melodies. This is synth art pop-and if you don’t shy away from it, you will hear a classic of this genre here.
Four and a half stars
Love and Rockets: Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven (1985)
While Peter Murphy experimented after the end of Bauhaus, guitarist Daniel Ash, bass player David J and drummer Kevin Haskins Love and Rockets are found and show very clever: The three feel that the time of pure genre music is in question, the first attempts at crossover, based on the assumption that a market for alternative rock music is created. Love and Rockets serve this, on their debut album they mix rock’n’roll clichés, commercial pop and gothic elements. With your hip-stiff cover version of the Tempation classic “Ball of Confusion” you can do a hit. At that time, the Lords of the New Church are traveling in similar realms, and even if this leather jacket-heavy post-punk-pop rock sounds very strange today: in 1985 it is a hot matter.
Three and a half stars
Murphy as an Alt-Gother
Peter Murphy: Ninth (2011)
Peter Murphy’s solo patrol is a difficult thing because the singer attaches importance to heavy sound and large gestures, so there is inevitably a lot in the pants. Ninth is a typical work of this phase in this regard, a lot sounds metallic and immobile, but Murphy has now perfected his Iggy imitation on songs like “Velocity Bird”, “Seesaw Sway” is a track with a bauhaus-ready chorus, “I Spit Roses” of convincing goth folk. The misery shows “Peace to Each”: a guitar reef from the rehearsal space center, a singing with an message for the guest book of the Evangelical parish two streets further: “Give peace to Each Thing You See.” For something like that, you shouldn’t have invented goth-rock.
Two and a half stars
Better let it stay
Go away White (2008)
Go away, white! Well then. “Too Much 21st Century” is the name of the first piece of the Bauhaus-Comed album, a very bad start, again with a silly guitar ribbe that Daniel Ash does not do justice to, but above all with a lousy text about the excessive demands of the 21st century, the model David Bowie would have overturned in the cast: “Too Much Computer, too much information”. Goth can be a timeless genre, here it sounds older than the board of the senior citizenship looks. Until the last song, the plate remains a unattractive chunk, the return would be a pure annoyance if the concerts in the original line -up were not entirely okay.
One and a half stars
Live etc
The number of Bauhaus-Live albums is immense, which is also due to the fact that the band had gigs in the 2005 tour in rows-as a souvenir. What you should stay away from is the semi -officially bootleg rest in Peace – The Final Concert (two stars), recorded in 1983, published in 1992: a loveless mixer mix, almost unedited. Classes better is this is for when … (four and a half stars), recorded in London in 1981, published in 2009: The band is under fire, plays the first two albums quite complete, plus the early singles. Bauhaus just pretend to be superstars. You are good! The pearl of the entire Bauhaus discography is a collection of BBC sessions under the title Swing the Heartache (five stars). Whether with John Peel or other DJs, the band can experiment with sounds, the sound is still pure as in the laboratory. Bauhaus covers “Telegram Sam” by T.Rex, Enos “Third Uncle” and Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust”, big songs such as “In the Flat Field” or “She’s in Parties” sound more dynamic than on the studio albums.