Faust :

Experimental Club

Experimental Club, 8 Oct 2004

To talk about Faust is to talk about one of the most influential formations in avant-gardist music of the last forty years. Revolutionary explorers of chaos and sonorous collage, transgressors of all labels, Faust has always been an immense centrifuge of recycled "information" which is after expulsed in the form of surreal audio, completely different to everything: Stockhausen, Velvet Underground, dadaism, free jazz, technology, Frank Zappa, concrete music, Tony Conrad, deconstruction rock, Sun Ra, La Monte Young, electroindustrialism... and now in 2004 even hip-hop...; everything, absolutely everything, digested and broken down by a free and anarchist creativity, expansive to infinity in the objective of constructing sonic tissues, audiocollages, which have influenced the experimental and electronic music of the last decades.

An extensive need to explore characterises various of the more outstanding names of German music during the seventies (the movement was baptized as the Krautrock in accordance precisely with a theme of Faust that carries the same title), which was headed - apart from Kraftwerk - by three notorious and completely unique bands: Can, Neu! and Faust. Groups with completely different styles but who shared a common attitude of transgression, experimentation and creative freedom, Faust being by far the most radical regarding intentions and sonic results, leaving behind a legacy which has inspired the following generations of unconformist musicians and no-musicians coming from punk, rock, electronic, industrial music or noisy improvisation: Throbbing Gristle, PIL, Swell Maps, Wire, The Fall, Cabaret Voltaire, Julian Cope, Sonic Youth, Half Japanese, Jim O'Rourke, Spacemen 3, Loop, Pavement, Stereolab, Tortoise, Cul De Sac, Kreidler, To Rococo Rot, etc, etc.

Nowadays the members of Faust are still true to themselves. They are more independent than ever, working for their own firm Klangbad, opening their music to the manipulation by remix done by artists such as the Residents, Kreidler, Dave Ball and Ingo Vauk, Howie B, Daniel Miller and Gareth Jones, Mathias Schaffhäuser, etc (the remixes CD Freispiel, Klangbad, 2002), and editing surprising and unpredictable CDs such as their recent Derbe Respect, Alder (Staubgold/Klangbad, 2004): a joint album by Faust and the North American industrial hip-hop threesome Dälek. Besides, they've been able to reinvent themselves as a live group, with a show that can only be seen occasionally at festivals and special events. The actual members of Faust are: Hans-Joachim Irmler (organ, electronics), Lars Paukstat (percussion), Michael Stoll (bass), Steven Wray Lobdell (guitar) and Werner 'Zappi' Diermaier (drums).

ref: Experimental Club