Bauhaus 'Go Away White' album

It is virtually impossible to imagine the last 30 years of rock music without the influence of Bauhaus. The band expanded the traditional guitar, drums, bass, voice line up into territories no one else could have imagined and in the process forged an inimitable sound that can only be categorized as Bauhaus. They have inspired countless bands and have mesmerized the masses with their ability to be simultaneously sparse, dark, anthemic, and glam. Bauhaus managed to create their own universe that encompassed a sound, look, aesthetic, and points of reference that have been frequently imitated but remain unmistakably theirs.

The band re-emerged in 2005, to raves from fans and critics alike, and gave us another classic moment when Peter Murphy was lowered onto the Coachella stage upside down. Like all extraordinary things, the reunion was ephemeral and Bauhaus is no more but they were together long enough to give us one last classic, Go Away White, the band’s swan song.

Go Away White is an insightful portrait of society that pushes the elements of a Bauhaus record further than ever before. The album begins with the garage stomp of “Too Much 21st Century” and its dissection of the modern world’s preoccupation with control, stardom, and wealth. “Endless Summer of the Damned” takes on global warming in a singular way with a menacing rhythm section and dissonant guitar. The redemptive “Black Stone Heart” lends the album its title with its refrain “I come with this darkness and go away white” and uses a piano and whistle as precisely as Ennio Morricone. The album is a daring and spellbinding collection of songs that serve as the bookend to Bauhaus.

Daniel Ash, David J, Kevin Haskins, and Peter Murphy have created an album as exciting and relevant as their first releases that left a permanent scar on the face of music. Echoes of Bauhaus have been heard in the work of their heirs and imitators for the past few decades and 25 years after their last studio release, the band have returned with one last undiluted glimpse into their world. These songs will inspire countless others and ensure that Bauhaus will never truly die.

biography
“I come with this darkness and go away white.”

Bauhaus slid fully formed from punk rock's womb in late 1978. Over the course of four hot years, they unintentionally birthed a genre (Goth), moved on, moved forward, and surged mercurial through the post-punk music scene, tearing into tense, stark, dub bass-driven new-wave, T-Rex-esque glam, and swirling, clattering, orchestral atmospherics, whilst churning it all into a grand velvet, Rimbaudian hallucination. It was a wild, inspired, enthralling sound. And it still is. Now there is a new record.

‘Go Away White’ was recorded in 18 days at Zircon Skye in Ojai, with singer Peter Murphy, bassist David J, guitarist Daniel Ash, and drummer Kevin Haskins playing together as a band in one room, taking first takes as final cuts. So, a new record but apparently a final one, the band having decided to release it as a posthumous swan song.

‘Go Away White’ is everything you would hope Bauhaus would deliver as their final statement. Fronted by a cover photo of Bethesda, the angel of the healing waters in New York's Central Park, the music inside is pure cathartic renovation, a psychedelic glimpse into an enchanted moment. Aided in part by guitarist Daniel Ash's inspired use of Jimi Hendrix's own personal Vox wah wah pedal, gifted to him by Peter Murphy at the start of the sessions, it is pop as much as it is experimental.

The 10 songs on ‘Go Away White’channel the kind of magic timelessness you could imagine on a mighty bill with Joy Division, Bowie, Devo, the Creatures, Antony, My Bloody Valentine, and Kraftwerk--with Oscar Wilde playing master of ceremonies.

As the NME once said, "Bauhaus are to Goth, what Radiohead are to Prog."

It's all building blocks. Give ‘Go Away White’ an honest minute and you'll realize that The Klaxons, The Killers, The Rapture and Foals all got their beats from Bauhaus, and how--without them--there would be no Nine Inch Nails or Jane's Addiction or Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand, AFI, TV on the Radio, Interpol, Hot Hot Heat or LCD Sound System.

The accomplishments of the band are too many to list here but to touch lightly, there are the four studio albums: ‘In the Flat Field’ (1980), ‘Mask’ (1981), ‘The Sky's Gone Out’ (1982), and ‘Burning from the Inside’ (1983). There is the riveting appearance with David Bowie in the movie,‘The Hunger’. There are the classic Peel sessions and the hits--seismic rumbles such as ‘She's in Parties’, ‘Kick in the Eye’,’Stigmata Martyr’, and the great, epic, pillar of ether and brooding, psychedelia, that is "Bela Lugosi's Dead."

So, an end but an end with one final sonorous statement. Behold ‘Go Away White’.

Watch as night comes, as day breaks and the light . . . pours . . . in.

--Written by Adam Gnade

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