Einstürzende Neubauten (German pronunciation: [ˈaɪnˌʃtʏɐtsəndə ˈnɔʏˌbaʊtən], Collapsing New Buildings) is a German post-industrial band, originally from West Berlin, formed in 1980. The group currently comprises Blixa Bargeld (lead vocals, guitar, keyboard), Alexander Hacke (bass, guitar, vocals), N.U. Unruh (custom-made instruments, percussion, vocals), Jochen Arbeit (guitar and vocals), and Rudolf Moser (custom-built instruments, percussion, and vocals).
One of their "trademarks" is the use of custom-built instruments, predominantly made out of scrap metal and building tools, and noises, in addition to standard musical instruments.
Source: Wikipedia
Along with Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle, Germany's Einstürzende Neubauten ("collapsing new buildings" helped pioneer industrial music with an avant-garde mix of white-noise guitar drones, vocals verging on the unlistenable at times, and a clanging, rhythmic din produced by a percussion section consisting of construction materials, hand and power tools, and various metal objects.
Neubauten was founded by vocalist/guitarist Blixa Bargeld and percussionist and American expatriate N.U. Unruh in Berlin as a performance art collective; their early activities included a seemingly inexplicable half-naked appearance on the Berlin autobahn, where the duo spent some time beating on the sides of a hole in an overpass. The group's early lineup also included percussionists Beate Bartel and Gudrun Gut, plus contributor and sound engineer Alexander Van Borsig; their earliest recordings are mostly unstructured, free-form noise issued on various cassettes and singles, including their first single "Fuer den Untergang," the 1981 EP Schwarz, and the 1982 album Kollaps. Some of these recordings are compiled on the Strategies Against Architecture '80-'83 collection, with live shows on the cassette-only 2x4. Bartel and Gut were replaced by ex-Abwräts member F.M. Einheit (who served as Neubauten's chief machinery operator) in 1983, when guitarist and electronics expert Alexander Hacke and Abwräts bassist Mark Chung also joined. A tour of England opening for the Birthday Party resulted in a contract with Some Bizarre Records, which released the slightly more structured Zeichnungen des Patienten O.T., as well as consternation from club owners and journalists over Neubauten's stage demolitions and frequent ensuing violence.
Neubauten was founded by vocalist/guitarist Blixa Bargeld and percussionist and American expatriate N.U. Unruh in Berlin as a performance art collective; their early activities included a seemingly inexplicable half-naked appearance on the Berlin autobahn, where the duo spent some time beating on the sides of a hole in an overpass. The group's early lineup also included percussionists Beate Bartel and Gudrun Gut, plus contributor and sound engineer Alexander Van Borsig; their earliest recordings are mostly unstructured, free-form noise issued on various cassettes and singles, including their first single "Fuer den Untergang," the 1981 EP Schwarz, and the 1982 album Kollaps. Some of these recordings are compiled on the Strategies Against Architecture '80-'83 collection, with live shows on the cassette-only 2x4. Bartel and Gut were replaced by ex-Abwräts member F.M. Einheit (who served as Neubauten's chief machinery operator) in 1983, when guitarist and electronics expert Alexander Hacke and Abwräts bassist Mark Chung also joined. A tour of England opening for the Birthday Party resulted in a contract with Some Bizarre Records, which released the slightly more structured Zeichnungen des Patienten O.T., as well as consternation from club owners and journalists over Neubauten's stage demolitions and frequent ensuing violence.
When Nick Cave left the Birthday Party and formed his backing band the Bad Seeds, Bargeld became the guitarist and toured and recorded with Cave over most of the decade. He remained with Neubauten, however, which released Halber Mensch in 1986, showcasing its wider range of expression. The group disbanded briefly but soon re-formed, and have released albums off and on since then for Elektra, signing to Trent Reznor's Nothing label for 1998's Ende Neu. While Bargeld remains a Bad Seed, Van Borsig and Hacke contributed to the remainder of the Birthday Party's recordings as Crime & the City Solution. In May of 2000 Einstürzende Neubauten released the full-length Silence Is Sexy on Mute Records. Elektra reissued both Strategies Against Architecture compilations on CD, while most of the group's '80s albums remain available on the independent Thirsty Ear label.
Einstürzende Neubauten's first album, as one might imagine, is their most primitive and radical effort, the purest expression of their original aesthetic. This makes the album both historically significant and conceptually intriguing, of course, but what's most interesting about this album is that it still sounds surprising decades after its release. Often, albums that are considered extreme art statements upon their debut sound almost quaint a few years later, but while Kollaps perhaps sounds less extreme to ears that heard industrial music turned into disco pabulum by the likes of Nine Inch Nails than it did before, songs like the eight-minute title track and the rumbling live closer, "Negativ Nein," are still a fascinating blend of rhythm and random bashing, tonality and atonality, with anguished vocals by Blixa Bargeld that often seem to have little connection with anything else in the piece. The brief tracks, like the 80-second "Sehnsucht," are even more extreme explorations of pure noise. Starting as early as the next album, Einstürzende Neubauten would begin slowly introducing more mainstream musical concepts into their aesthetic, making Kollaps as undiluted a listening experience as there is in the entire catalog.
More of their beautiful Noise:
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