ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out the philosophical parameters for Neubauten. Neubauten's aim in using their city as site, text and sonic object was to find ways in which to reinvent a youth music and identity, free of parental guilt and amnesia as well as to push out the boundaries of what constitutes music. The disposition for musicians and critics to discuss music through architectural discourse often imbues the work with a certain positive complexity. Although not as prominent as architecture, the Destructive Character and the angel are consistently associated with Neubauten's work. In Neubauten's texts, angels are initially both challenging children and useless or dead relics; later, there is a sense of hope in renewed flight and an angel's-/bird's-eyed view of the land. Once the sonic angel is born' it is aided by music's utopian power to fly free from gravity into the empty skies.
