German Rock & Pop Music

Together with Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Griste, Einstürzende Neubauten is one of the pioneers of the musical industry, a vanguard blend of white noise, strident guitars, voices processed to a point where they become unrecognizable and raucous rhythms produced by a percussion section made up of construction material, tools such as drills and electric saws and pieces of metal.

The band was founded by guitarist and singer Blixa Bargeld and North American N.U. Unruh in 1980 in Berlin as part of a Dadaistic musical movement; the first records are not much more than noise experiments without recognizable music structures. In 1983 they toured England as a supporting band to the Australian band The Birthday Party, which meant a contract with the record label Some Bizarre Records, with which they edited the slightly more structured Portrait of Patient O.T.

Despite their various break-ups and moments of working apart (mostly due to Blixa Bargeld's parallel job as guitarist for Nick Cave's Bad Seeds), Einstürzende Neubauten continued making records, although throughout the years they began to lose brute force for more complexity in their tracks, with notable increases arrangement and melody-wise. Records that are highly recommendable to those wishing to enter the Neubaten galaxy include their compilations Strategies Against Architecture I, II and III in which a significant part of their more than 20-year-old career is summarised.