Rasthof Dachau, I have known the name for decades, but I never really listened to them. This is partly because of the project’s name. I am not much interested in WWII but I do know tht Dachau was one of the two German extermination camps (the other one was Auswitz) and to call it a ‘resting place’ (Rasthof) gives me a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. Perhaps it was not meant to refer to the camp or it did and the shock value works too well for me, but that is why it took a couple of decades to try out the music. Later I heard music of this project without knowing what it was. Great, dark ‘ambient noise’ with aggressive vocals, so in the end I decided to set out and investigate the project. You cannot listen to extreme music without extreme humour, right?
It proves not too easy to find Dachau material. Most of it has long been sold out. In the Cold Spring mail order I found this limited compilation (350 copies) with material from 1999 to 2002. Unfortunately there is not too much of the noise side of this project. Some tracks are more dark ambient, other tracks old style industrial. There are a couple of very good tracks to be found, especially the great dark noise opening track called “Exitus”.
Rasthof Dachau is a project for people who like noise music, but not of the unstructured, chaotic type. People like me! But you might have to live with the fact that some people have an even harscher sense of humour as yourself!
Link: Steinklang