Einstrzende Neubauten's Kollaps

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Intended to be unlistenable, Germanys Einstrzende Neubautens 1981-debut album Kollaps has attracted listeners four decades after it was recorded. Perhaps the best musical encapsulation of the Cold War as experienced in the walled city of West Berlin, Kollaps is a product of its time while remaining as vital, exhilarating and surprising as the day it was released. The book explores the contexts, themes, and influences that shaped Kollaps. It describes the early days of Einstrzende Neubauten in West Berlin, the manic energy of their performances, their use of scrap metal, drill hammers, bodily sounds, and tape loops, their preoccupation with nihilism and subversion, and what Nick Cave called the incredibly mournful, haunting nature of their music. The beginning of a 40-year career, this first burst of energy remains their purest statement.

Author Bio

Melle Jan Kromhout is a musicologist based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, working on the conceptual relations between music, sound, and media from the 19th century to the present. He is the author of The Logic of Filtering: How Noise Shapes the Sound of Recorded Music (2021). Jan Nieuwenhuis is an artist, writer, and artistic advisor based in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Collaborating with musicians and artists in a variety of contexts, his writing focuses on 20th- and 21st-century art and music, addressing themes like the philosophy of listening and the creative potential of deconstructing cultural heritage.