Faust

Music:

Member Since: 6/20/2006
Band Website: faust-pages.com
Band Members:

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FAUST
Werner Zappi Diermaier
Jean-Hervé Péron:
[ + special guests ]

... / ...

FOUNDER MEMBERS :
Werner Zappi Diermaier
Joachim Irmler
Arnulf Meifert
Jean-Hervé Péron
Rudolf Sosna
Gunther Wüsthoff
-
original producer
Uwe NETTELBECK

"In the midst of Faust musik time ticks like a bomb"
(manifesto, 1973)

A SHORT BIOGRAPHY:
by Chris Cutler (1996 Recommended records)
" Inventors of 'Kraut Rock', iconoclasts extraordinaire, Faust are key figures in 20th Century music. In the early 70's, along with Can and Kraftwerk, they re-invented pop music as a specifically European art-form. Virtually imprisoned by Polydor in their own studio for two years, they were able to revolutionize the whole process of musical production; they improvised with Industrial noise, generated bizarre hypnotic grooves, indulged in shockingly wilful studio-based collages, and dabbled with every conceivable musical genre, sometimes simultaneously! Every now and then they found time for a burst of satirical pop, or occasional waves of delicate ambience. Amongst those Faust have strongly influenced we must count Brian Eno, Joy Division, Cabaret Voltaire, Test Department, Neubauten, My Bloody Valentine, Julian Cope and a host of Industrial and Techno bands. The music has lost none of it's immediacy or relevance - it sounds as if it was recorded last week, not last decade

Julian COPE:
"There is no group more mythical than Faust"

MELODY MAKER:
"Faust are essential, not just as a history lesson, but as a living legacy and as a reproach to an underachieving age."

NME:
"A radical mix of Musique Concrete, Stockhausen, the Velvet Underground, and moments of almost pastoral beauty."

TIME OUT:
"Faust were first!"

MELODY MAKER:
"Anyone who's loved the last half-decade's re-invention of the guitar, (Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine et al.), will instantly recognise Faust as a prime ancestor of 'our' music."

JOHN PEEL:
The first time I heard tell of Faust was when I saw their extraordinary first LP in its equally extraordinary sleeve and felt that, regardless of the music within, I had to acquire one. When the music turned out to be highly original and very exciting that was a welcome bonus.
Their single It's a Bit Of a Pain occured during sessions for the second LP - which I've not yet heard - and will serve as an introduction to the band. I would advise you to hear the LP though because it must be one of the most important of the past few years. It's not often that you hear a band that is heading off in a totally new direction - and it's surprising that when you do many of those bands are from the Continent. It would be easy to say that Faust's music was Germanic and to let it go at that but I don't think that would be enough. It's really music born of a technological age in which there is neither time nor room for sentiment. Faust paint a bleak vision with music in much the way Leonard Cohen or Nico do with words. It is not easy to describe it in terms of what has gone before. (John Peel, "Faust", Disc 1972)

Faust
"Press Release", Polydor 1971:

Great things are happening in Germany. Developments are taking place which could change the face of rock music for the next decade. Already the outside world has heard indications of what's going on in the music of groups like Amon Düül 2 and Can.

In Germany itself many other groups are making daring, experimental music and building up solid and serious followings.

Unlike rock musicians in other countries this new breed of German musicians is not interested is imitating what's gone before them - they're looking for new sounds and new forms of expression. Their music is no hand-me-down Beatles or Stones, or the white man's idea of R&B - it's their own, building as much on the immense tradition of German music as on the Anglo-Saxon dominated traditions of current pop. And the way they're working at it, the rock tide could soon be flowing in the opposite direction.

Faust have taken the search for new sounds farther than any other group. Their music is technological rock taken to extremes: "In every country musicians are beginning to synthesize new sounds. The trouble is that this hasn't been done consistently enough. As a musician one now needs enough understanding of electronics to systematically build the instrument which will produce exactly the sound one wants to hear. The ideal is for each musician to make his own instruments."

Since spring 1971 Faust have been putting this theory into practice, living in almost monastic isolation in the north Gertman countryside between Hamburg and Bremen. The former schoolhouse in which they live also serves as their studio and sound laboratory - the old classroom is filled with a jungle of electronic equipment, with 8-track recording facilities. In October 1971 their first album was completed.

The music on it is provoking, dissonant, sometimes serious, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, but always unpredictable. New tones, textures and effects are made even more startling by being set against conventional, even corny instrumental groupings. The lyrics sung, intoned, shouted or whispered, are used for atmosphere as much as for their literal sense. Extreme aural violence alternates with moments of peacefulness. If it sounds like anarchy at first, further listening brings out the intentions behind even its most disinterested passages.

Faust are now well into their second album, and can look back on the first objectively: "It's not a record you can listen to all day, but when you've been 1istening to other kinds of music it's really good to hear it. Perhaps it's a fault of the album that the moods shift so suddenly. But it's a perfect reflection of the situation we were in when we made it.

At that time we were rather dogmatic. We felt that our ideas had to be protected, that they were threatened by the system, the business, that music has to go through now. We were frightened that our ideas would get lost in all this. but since then we've seen that when our ideas are good, however much they depart from the norm, they get through. We no longer say that there are some things we would never do in any circumstances.

We've got to the stage now where we're making music of many styles. We don't want the music to be bracketed and labelled - it should be quite clear to those who listen to it whether it's serious or light-hearted, music to make you think or music to make you feel good. And we've nothing against dance music either - we can use the sounds and effects we 've developed in such a way now that people are going to really want to get up and move around to them."

Faust want to perform their music 'live' as soon as possible, and the second side of the LP was recorded under live conditions in the studio at Wümme. But they insist that the sound they bring to the stage must be exactly the sound which they have developed in the studio - and for that they need transportable equipment which is still being put together.

Until then Faust will have to be judged on their recorded output - but there's enough on the first LP alone to suggest that the direction Faust are going in is the direction which everybody else is going to follow.

Faust are:

Werner Diermaier
Joachim Irmler
Jean-Hervé Péron
Rudolf Sosna
Gunther Wüsthoff

Discography:

[ NEW RELEASE 2007 ]

FAUST / NURSE WITH WOUND:
'DISCONNECTED'
cd, art-errorist

[ SOON 2007 ]
faust 'trial and error' dvd, 45
faust 'cardiff-art' 2dvd, mop-visioni

[ Released ]
2007 In autumn, uk tour 2005- 3 cds box + 1 dvd - Dirter
2005 (collectif metz) 3 cds box -arterrorist
2005 (collectif metz) 3 cds box + 1videocd -arterrorist
2005 connections dvd-r - zappi diermaier
2005 impressions dvd - zick zack/hit thing
2004 authentic life dvd-r - zappi diermaier
2004 faust vs. dalek derbe respect alder is cd klangbad
2003 (hj irmler) life like cdlp staubgold
2002 patchwork 1971-2002 cd klangbad
2002 freispiel remixes album cdlp klangbad
2001 wir brauchen dich remixes single klangbad
2000 The Wumme years 1970-73, cds box rermegacorp
2000 (jh peron) live 00 at lmc cdlp private
2000 live at the garage 96 cdlp private
2000 the land of ukko and rauni 2cds klangbad ektra
1999 ravvivando cdlp klangbad
1998 in japan video klangbad
1997 Live in Edinburgh cdlp klangbad
1997 faust wakes nosferatu cdlp klangbad
1996 you know us cdlp klangbad
1996 bbc sessions single klangbad
1996 untitled cdlp klangbad
1994 rien cdlp table of the elements
1992 the faust concerts 2 cd table of the elements
1990 the faust concerts 1 cd table of the elements
1989 the last lp cdlp recommended
1986 return of a legend munich and elsewhere cdlp rermegacorp
1979 71 minutes of faust cdlp rermegacorp
1974 faust IV cdlp virgin
1973 (tony conrad and faust) cdlp virgin table of the elements
1973 the faust tapes cdlp virgin rermegacorp
1972 so far cdlp polydor rermegacorp
1971 clear virgin polydor virgin rermegacorp