EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN

As a concept or entity, EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN is one of the few German bands that has made a genuine impact internationally through its unique, trendsetting blend. It has influenced numerous other bands and art forms—from dance theater to the visual arts—and has also inspired film to this day—from Schlingensief to Tarantino. Although the media initially mocked the band as a bizarre “curiosity in the divided city,” it quickly established itself around the world as one of the renowned greats of the present and of pop culture. It has influenced an entire generation and even today provides blueprints—often copied—for experimental sound art and performance.

What began in 1980 in Berlin—the city behind the Wall—as impetuous noise constructions has undergone countless metamorphoses and can still be described as avant-garde today. To prevent this impressive body of work from overshadowing the band, Blixa Bargeld, N.U. Unruh, Jochen Arbeit, and Rudolf Moser are constantly setting new artistic goals for themselves. Whether it’s theater projects like Heiner Müller’s “Hamletmaschine,” the highly experimental “Musterhaus” project, “Lament”—a musical work about the outbreak of World War I—or “Rampen – apm: alien pop music”—with which the band tongue-in-cheek establishes its own genre—Einstürzende Neubauten’s unpredictability prevents them from becoming mere artifacts and secures them a place in the canon of the contemporary avant-garde.