Experimental music trailblazers Einstürzende Neubauten will play Union Transfer on Halloween

Founded in 1980 as an art / performance collective in a divided Berlin, Germany, the ever-evolving Einstürzende Neubauten went on to become a touchstone of what would be later termed industrial music. From there, their style expanded to incorporate noisy soundscapes, chilling ambient tones, an oddly funky undercurrent, and more.

With twelve studio albums in their catalog, and an as-yet untitled new record on the way, the band is going on its first U.S. tour in what seems like forever this autumn, and it plays Union Transfer on Halloween. The run of performances is called the Year of the Rat Tour, and the band expressed its hopes for it in a (somewhat dramatically worded) statement on its website.

The album and the tour mark the quintessence of the band’s output, opening yet another unexpected door in 40 years of ongoing sound research by a very experimental group of musicians around Blixa Bargeld, consisting of Alexander Hacke, NU Unruh, Jochen Arbeit, and Rudi Moser. The Neubauten tour in the band’s own impressive and unrivaled style presents the results of these latest musical innovations. … Appropriately, in the Year of the Rat — the symbol of ingenuity and versatility according to the Chinese zodiac — the band is not resting on the laurels of its last four decades. Instead, it curiously continues to explore everything that the sound universe has to yield, with one eye on the future and with boundless playfulness.

The Union Transfer concert goes on sale Wednesday, January 15th, at 10 a.m. More information can be found at the XPN Concert Calendar. Below, listen to some music from Neubauten’s catalog.