Die Haut & Nick Cave - Burnin' The Ice LP

Nick Cave, new in Berlin, entered the world of Die Haut in 1982. The result is a furious album that paves the way for the music that Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds have been making since 1984. BURNIN' THE ICE has not been available for a long time. Now the record is being reissued on vinyl – and after many years, it closes a gap that drove Cave completists to despair.

No wild god has fallen from the sky yet. Not even Nick Cave, perhaps the best music performer of the present day. Cave has worked hard for his power, his aura, his reputation. An important early milestone on this journey: BURNIN' THE ICE, released in 1983 together with Berlin band Die Haut. An album like a contemporary document. A ticket to the diffuse and adventurous Berlin of the early 80s, right in the middle of Nick Cave's hot period between The Birthday Party and The Bad Seeds.

BURNIN' THE ICE captures the moment when Nick Cave and Die Haut first developed the music that would later make him seem larger than life. The sound on this record is existential and experimental. Interested in ecstasy and excess. Relentless and uncompromising.

Nick Cave's work is actually considered to be well documented. BURNIN' THE ICE was the exception. That is about to change. The Hit Thing label, curated by Larry Mullins, part of the Bad Seeds' live lineup, has established a reputation with releases such as Morphosa Harmonia and Mullins' own production Camissionia. Hit Thing is the perfect label to finally shed new light on this long blind spot in Cave's discography: BURNIN' THE ICE is receiving a long overdue LP reissue. With new vinyl mastering by Doug Henderson, responsible for the mastering of Swans, among others. An LP that was almost thought to be lost is available again.

A flashback: June 1982, The Birthday Party, originally from Australia, based in London since a few months, are performing in Berlin. A support act is still needed for the show, Die Haut are the logical choice. A group unlike any other. Inspired by the style of bebop jazz musicians, the music of Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band or New York no-wave acts like DNA. Christoph Dreher, Martin Peter, Remo Park and Thomas Wydler perform in suits, don't talk to the audience, dispense with a lead singer and everything else that conventional rock bands do. “For us it was about energy and improvisation,” says Christoph Dreher. “What we absolutely didn't want was to be a band of people-pleasers.” Nick Cave, lead singer of The Birthday Party, is overwhelmed. In London, a lot is just for show. In Berlin, they mean business.

After that, things happen very fast. In July 1982, Die Haut records the first single, “Der karibische Western,” in London. Nick Cave drops by the studio and can be heard whistling on the B-side, “Die faulen Hunde von Tijuana.” In August, the Cave camp moved from London to Berlin, with a first stopover at the loft of Die Haut guitarist Christoph Dreher on Dresdner Strasse. For a few years, this apartment was the sociotope of a scene that does not exist in such a concentrated form in London. “400 Deutschmarks rent for 250 square meters, initially even with a rehearsal room in the basement,” says Christoph Dreher, recalling the special conditions in the divided city. That was how it was in Berlin in the early eighties: “You got by on extremely little money.” A life in artistic, creative intoxication. And, yes, intoxicating substances were also involved.

But they also worked hard, with a lot of discipline. “Three to four rehearsals a week were standard,” says Thomas Wydler, the Swiss drummer of Die Haut, who came to Berlin from Zurich in 1980 and was saved by Die Haut, as he says: “Until I met these people, I was in danger of getting lost in the city.” In December 1982, Die Haut set about recording a new album. After the short and, as Christoph Dreher says, “still a bit strange and sterile-sounding” first mini-LP Schnelles Leben, the actual debut. With Nick Cave as guest singer. He agreed immediately when the band asked him. Berlin was out of the question as a production location, “the studios were too big and too expensive,” recalls Thomas Wydler. Initially, the plan was to go to Weilerswist near Cologne, to the Can Studio, which was housed in a former movie theater. When that didn't work out, the choice fell on Studio Funk in Aachen, where Dreher had lived before he moved to Berlin. One advantage was that the musicians could stay overnight in the kitchen of Dreher's brother.

First, Die Haut record the tracks as instrumentals. The guitars (mostly played by Remo Park (deceased 2016) and Martin Peter (deceased 2006)) duel, Christoph Dreher's bass pumps pressure into the sound, Thomas Wydler plays staccato drums. It sounds like music from a post-structuralist film noir. After a few days, Nick Cave joins them, together with Anita Lane, his partner, who helps him with the lyrics. “Nick always carried around some kind of folder with notes and finished lyrics,” Thomas Wydler recalls. He needs two days of intense work for the sessions, and then the vocals for four pieces are recorded; three other tracks remain instrumental. “Even back then, I was impressed by how talented he is and how intuitively he works. Without making a big deal out of it. Without being a snob,” says Wydler. And he knows what he is talking about: Wydler has been the drummer of the Bad Seeds without interruption since 1985.

What Nick Cave achieves as a singer for Die Haut: he brings the blues to Berlin. His very own blues. Many of his lyrics and the way he sings are inspired by the southern United States. Not by the romantic image, but by the abysses that have always drawn Nick Cave to. “Warning: Contains Shocking Lyrics” – the label put this sticker on the LP back then. His approach fits the music of Die Haut incredibly well. In STOW-A-WAY, the first song on the record, Cave plays the desperate stowaway on the ship called love. The band plays a mixture of nervous cool jazz and brutal noise guitars. A song like a punch in the gut, leaving not much of the butterflies. TOKYO EXPRESS is a ghostly galloping song in the tradition of the Die Haut single “Der karibische Western”, influenced by the way the acid rock band Quicksilver Messenger Service deconstructs and reassembles Western music on albums like Happy Trails. TRUCK LOVE is a rockabilly-panic-attack, with Nick Cave singing as a trucker who equates the horsepower and tons of freight he moves across the highway with his potency: “Mega-tons of muscle kicking dust across Texas.” The way Cave gets worked up here, the way he emphasizes the words, has something of Mark E. Smith of The Fall, one of his heroes. The second instrumental, THE VICTORY, in which Die Haut magically combine Neu!, No Wave and Northern Soul, is followed by PLEASURE IS THE BOSS: The band plays a labor triumph march, with razor-sharp riffs like early Who, before the piece transitions into a post-punk part, as if imagined by Morricone, while Cave gives this song about sex a special twist with his signature humor: “What's okay with the boss is okay with me!” Pay attention to the thundering force of the song finale – only a group that doesn't want to leave the last word to the singer can pull this off. Even if the singer is Nick Cave. DUMB EUROPE is a bitter rant about Europe, the Australian's adopted home. Cave rants about the junk, filth and stench. True to the motto: you can only really hate what you love. Cave and Die Haut nevertheless throw themselves into excess, demonstrated by some plastered “La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la”'s, which have to hold their own against increasingly out-of-tune, “drunken” guitars. The album ends with the short piece THIS FLAME WILL NEVER DIE created as a spontaneous improvisation by Dreher on bass and Wydler on drums at a soundcheck – and left as such.

After the recordings in Aachen, the band mixed the songs in the Berlin studio Funk with Klaus Krüger, former drummer for Tangerine Dream and for Iggy Pop. Unfortunately, BURNIN' THE ICE did not receive the attention it deserved after its release in August 1983. Some bankrupts ensured that the record was soon no longer available. One reason, however, was the restlessness of the participating artists at the time. Die Haut undergoes personnel changes. Nick Cave dissolves The Birthday Party in 1983, recruits The Bad Seeds from the Loft on Dresdner Strasse, with Thomas Wydler on drums, who plays in both groups until 1994. In 1998, Die Haut breaks up. Now is the time to rediscover the influential music of this band.

So here is some excellent news: BURNIN' THE ICE is finally available again as an LP. Remastered for vinyl and pressed to the highest standards by Optimal. With a limited-edition of 1500 copies in crystal-clear vinyl (matching the title of the LP, whose sound Christoph Dreher compares to “bursting ice”) and 1000 copies for the US market in red vinyl.  - Hit Thing Records