Blixa Bargeld and Einstürzende Neubauten

Book excerpt: Jennifer Shryane provides a much-needed analysis of Einstürzende Neubauten's important place in popular/experimental music history. She illustrates their innovations with found- and self-constructed instrumentation, their Artaudian performance strategies and textual concerns, as well as their methods of independence. The group have also made a consistent and unique contribution to the development of the independent German Language Contemporary Music scene, which although often acknowledged as influential, is still rarely examined.