Freispiel Review

Aquarius

Aquarius Records, Nov 2002

Legendary krautrock band Faust's 30th anniversary is being celebrated with not free pinball and fireworks, but remixes... The remix cd ep that preceeded this was ok, if unneccessary. Here's the full remix album, with one of that Soft Cell guy's mixes from the ep, plus mixes from other mostly Euro electronica folks (Kreidler, Howie B, Surgeon, Funkstorung among them). Dead Voices On Air and, interestingly, The Residents also appear. All the tracks remixed come from Faust's recent (and quite good) Ravvivando album. Our verdict: still unneccessary, and not ok. But at least the remixers aren't violating classic old '70s Faust tracks, like with Can's Sacrilege remix project. And electronica fans will find this to be a fine electronica comp, like so many others. But Faust fans aren't going to see any improvement over the originals (not to be expected anyway) OR any other reason to listen to this...it's just uninteresting and predictable. Too bad, 'cause Faust are such an interesting band. If they HAD to do a remix album for their 30th, they should have picked artists with more of their eccentric artistic spirit. We'd be more keen on Reynols or Boredoms remixes, maybe Philip Jeck or Aphex Twin...oh well.

ref: Aquarius Records