Elves, dwarves, birdies, deer, bunnies and every other woodland creature gather 'round when Faun Fables (aka Dawn McCarthy with assistance from Sleepytime Gorilla Museum's Nils Frykdahl) sings her pagan-infused songs. And if you've been digging the recent burgeoning neo-folk movement (Jolie Holland, Joanna Newsom, Devendra Banhart, Vetiver to name a few), you'd do well to follow their lead. You might recall that we reviewed her Family Album cd earlier this year, and Drag City has kindly reissued two of her earlier albums -- this one and her debut Early Song. Of the three, Mother Twilight is perhaps her darkest, most otherworldly and vocally complex album. It fully envelopes and transport the willing listener to her fantasy land. We previously likened Family Album to the Wickerman film soundtrack, and the comparison is just as fitting here. Overall her voice is a surprising meeting point of unlikely bedfellows Cat Power's Chan Marshall, Grace Slick and Beth Orton. Some folks may find her deeply emotive vocal style a bit challenging (or trying), but those who are into it will surely be very much so.
Dawn McCarthy, the central force behind Faun Fables, takes a few more exploratory steps in expanding her neo-folk realm, and the results are an impressively composed and expansive album. Far less fey, timid woodland pixie and more self assured earth mother. If you've enjoyed her previous albums, The Transit Rider makes for a smooth transition with some intriguing developments, perhaps most notably in its being a concept album of the stage show she toured in 2002. The album's peak is definitely its fourth track "In Speed", and it's a perfect demonstration of her growth. The song's spiraling urgency stands in stark contrast to the album's slower more traditional folk numbers. On the latter, she could easily be mistaken for alternately the granddaughter of Vashti Bunyan or the kid sister of Chan Marshall. However on this song McCarthy's handwringing despair conjures much more stormy times (almost in a Jon Anderson Yes fashion) and is countered in an effectively foreboding manner by frequent FF collaborator Nils Frykdahl's deep Laibach or Swans-esque countenance. A set of particularly offbeat numbers come later in the album, the peculiarly stagey "The Questioning" and the subsequent spoken whispery "I No Longer Wish To" and then there's the very "The Cat Came Back"-ish eleventh tune "The Corwith Brothers". Although it stands solidly on its own merits, listening to this album certainly piques your curiosity with regards to the live theatrics. Hopefully they'll be dusting off their costumery for those of us who missed it a few years back!
Full length number three from these Cascadian black metallers, who always seem to exist in the shadow of their more popular brethren in Wolves In The Throne Room, and while both groups are sonically similar, Fauna definitely have their own take on the whole Pagan / Cascadian black metal thing. Avifauna is three long tracks (the shortest 17:02, the longest 29:23) separated by a couple brief interludes, the record beginning with the sound of the Cascadian forest, all birdsong in insect chitter, in fact the music doesn't even start until 90 seconds in, and even then, it's just acoustic guitar, and soon after, cello, and deep, dramatic crooned vox, a sort of haunting Pagan folk, that explodes at about the 8 minute mark into some dense, blasting blackness, thick insectoid buzz, yowled feral vokills, wild drumming, the whole thing epic and majestic and super melodic, eventually slowing down into a dirgey, doomy lope, before settling back into that foresty folk that opened up the proceedings, this time with some strange percussion, the sound slowly enveloped by more black buzz, the sound expanding into a sort of slomo Godspeed style finale, blackened and psychedelic and epic. The second track follows a similar pattern, opening with acoustic guitars and strings, the vocals this time a raspy growl, the vibe still haunting and hypnotic, and again, the song bursts into a furious black frenzy, way more dense and chaotic than the opener, more roiling and minor key, with a break in the middle for some loping post rock, all clean guitar, before slipping right back into distorted, gnarled heaviness, this time more midtempo, hypnotic and heady, before a surprisingly super melodic, and almost poppy coda, male/female vocal harmonies over soaring melodies, majestic and melancholic.
After a final interlude, all hushed shimmer and subterranean ambience, the album finishes off with "The Harpy", a whirring blackened buzz, beneath minor key guitar strum, the buzz slowly building, fragmenting into angular riffage, accompanied by anguished vox, the sound quickly slipping back into folkiness, all swirling soft strings and that acoustic guitar, before another burst of blackness, buzzing and frenzied, the sound lurching from blazing blast, to roiling buzzing dirge and back again, eventually the drums dropping out completely, leaving just a gorgeous hypnotic expanse of layered guitar buzz and blurred psychedelic riffage. Tranced out and mesmerizing. Fans of Wolves In The Throne Room who have yet to check these guys out, now's the time to right that wrong. And anyone who dug the last two Fauna's, are gonna no doubt dig this one too!
200 gram black vinyl, housed in a heavy matte laminated gatefold sleeve with spot varnishing.
Hailing from the same Cascadian forest that Wolves In The Throne Room call home, come the mysteriously monickered Fauna, with their 2006 demo, Rain, available on cd for the first time. Much like WITTR, these guys traffic in a sort of naturalistic black metal, focusing on rain, the earth, the forest, the spirits, nature in general, creating a sound that is meant to evoke massive forests looming overhead, of flora and of course fauna, snow glowing blow beneath the moonlight, branches glistening and glimmering in the falling rain, the record begins with what could very well be the sound of the forest, a field recording of wind, and insects, leaves and footsteps, running water... until finally a lone guitar begins its funereal fugue, minor key, loping and lugubrious, a bit mournful and melancholy. Eventually the guitars grow more intense, strummed instead of picked, a deep voice emerges, a rich, mournful croon, and so it goes, a dark brooding forest folk, lush with reverb and delay, the guitars intense and dramatic, very reminiscent of Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, when suddenly, the track explodes and the band is blowing out a frenzied blast of furious black metal buzz, mesmerizing, trancelike, repetitive, the riffs totally blown out and drenched in distortion, the drums a relentless blast, which goes on for minutes, before the track shifts again, and the band lurch into a sort of lumbering blackened doom, super dynamic with lots of space, weirdly hypnotic and circular sounding, just a dark tangle of distorted guitar, until the drums join in again. But instead of blasting, the track slips into more of a woozy dirge, thick and warm and dense, for just a two piece, these guys can create a seriously expansive sound, after a few minutes, they explode back into frenzied motion, the blast even faster than before, so distorted and blown out it's almost like a blackened blur, the vocals a harsh bellow, the blast gradually breaking down again, until the duo are back to that hauntingly melodic doom-ic lurch, before finishing off in a blast of staticky buzz, leaving just a smear of warm soft chords, which slowly and dreamily drift into the darkness beyond.
One of the two members of Fauna also plays in pagan doom folk outfit Alethes, which makes perfect sense in the context of Rain, and the influence of their WITTR neighbors can definitely be heard throughout, but Fauna definitely make that sound their own, mixing long stretches of doomy folkiness with intensive blasts of blackened fury, and peppering the proceedings with bits of sprawling doom, and shimmery ambience, to create their own sonic representation of the forest they call home.
Gorgeous packaging too, black on black origami style fold over cardstock sleeve, with a simple booklet featuring just the lyrics and no other info. Cool.
Record number two from these Cascadian black metallers, originally released in 2007, now remastered and partially re-recorded, replacing the original electronic drums with live drumming, and dividing the original hour plus epic into more manageable song length tracks, while still playing out as one single sprawling black metal naturescape.
Not sure what the deal is with these guys, they've obviously been around since 2006, when their debut Rain was originally released, but since 2007, we've heard nothing new, only the eventual re-release of their first two records. Not that we're complaining, well, okay, maybe we're complaining a little, but only cuz we want more, and are dying to hear what these guys sound like circa NOW.
But The Hunt will hold us over for now, like Rain before it, an expansive blackened collage of murky blasting blackness, and slow creeping ambient dronemusic, often lumped in with their Cascadian brethren Wolves In The Throne Room, and while there are definitely similarities, they tread markedly different sonic paths. WITTR channel the majestic blackness of SF legends Weakling, taking that sound and infusing it with their own naturalistic take on BM, adding female vocals, folky acoustic guitars, and plenty of polish, while Fauna seem to lurk in the shadows, with a sound more immediate and intimate, almost feral sounding at times, the drone element key to their sound, the black blasts are trancelike and mesmerizing, the ambient stretches expansive and haunting, the sound even here, gussied up and remastered, still sounds more DIY and punk than Wolves, and it suits them, the ferocity of the forest primeval, mixed with the mysterious tranquility of the endless night.
The Hunt is a blackened journey, a moonlit creep, ominous and drifting like some black fog, giving way to explosive fury, passionate howling and blasting metal, that slips into woozy melodic doominess, as easily as crushing grim blackness, in fact much of the heaviness on display leans toward a more melodic melancholia, spidery minor key guitars weaving together stretches of foresty folk and blasts of frenzied riffage, sometimes locking into dynamic doomish mathiness, but just as easily transforming that into churning gnarled black metal pound.
The final two parts here might be Fauna's finest moment, a dizzying tangle of stop start riffing, tense and dramatic, giving way to the moody final movement, a dirgey drift, with soaring vocals buried beneath the crumbling minor key distortion, melodic and mournful, peppered with furious blown out blasts, laced with acoustic guitars, finally fading out leaving just the sounds of the forest.
Swank packaging too, black on black origami style cardstock sleeve, with a printed black on black cardstock insert.
There's just something about music that is slow and mysterious, foggy and indistinct, fuzzy and dreamlike that just gets us everytime. Any sort of music sounds better to us, once it's buried in record crackle, or wrapped in thick swirls of fuzzy distortion, or smeared with a gauzy ambient haze. But the music of Faunts is so perfectly suited to being goergeously obfuscated that it's hard to imagine this music any other way. High Expectations doesn't sound like some crystal clear recording that was later treated with all sort of foggy filters, no this record sounds like it was created like this, birthed from some mysterious ether, a ghostlike sonic wraith, dreamy droney slow motion rock drifting skyward like some disembodied slowcore spectre. Blissy and incandescent, with a candelit churchlike warmth, a glow suffusing the air all around. Like a druggier more fuzzy Low. Each track a lugubrious creep, romantic and melancholy, hushed vocals, brushed drums and swoonsome lapsteel. Occasionally the songs build to a ferocious climax, the sound like a wall of blown out shoegaze guitars, with big distorted drums, beneath squiggly white hot traces of incendiary psychedelic skree, before drifting back to earth, a slow simmer, fuzzy melodies drifitng over and around ethereal vocals and muted mood rock minimalism. Imagine a late night slowcore band, viewed through fogged up glass, thick with running rainwater, everything wavery and blisssfully unfocused, every once in a while the headlights of a passing car flare brilliantly, spinning wild prisms of color and white hot sparkles before fading back to a muted dusky drift.
High Expectations has lots of varied elements, even if they only surface briefly her and there, some jazzy shuffle, some jangly indie rock, some Flaming Lips-ish big beat drug pop, some epic Godspeed-ish even a bit of near-new wave, but those disparate elements all manage to get woven deftly and beautifully into Faunts' delicate and drowsy sonic world.
Sounds as though Canadian indie rockers the Faunts got their instruments a wee bit intoxicated and the resulting music is itself quite intoxicating. Gauzy, highly processed guitars, shadowy drones and rounded pulses swirl and drift in and out of focus. A heady late night new wave, a lot more songy and a little less fuzzy and blissy than their full length, but it's still dark and delirious, wrapped in various degrees of instrumental haze and drone psych buzz, with bits of electronic skitter, and loping laid back down tempo groove mixed in here and there.
A great follow-up to their High Expectations / Low Results 2005 album!
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SWANK DOUBLE VINYL REISSUE FOR THESE KRAUTROCK LEGENDS!
This compiles the posthumous Faust odds-n-ends LPs Munic & Elsewhere and The Last LP. But of course, Faust is all about odds-n-ends. That's kinda their whole aesthetic. Not the first Faust record to buy, but definitely worthy of purchase.
Recommended completes their reissues of all the early Faust material with "71 Minutes of Faust". Essentially the same as the previous reissue known as "71 Minutes of Faust" this compiles the posthumous Faust odds-n-ends LPs "Munic & Elsewhere" and "The
Probably if you're a rabid Faust fan (aren't you?) you've already got this, the disc of rarities that was previously only obtainable through purchase of the entire Faust box set. But in case you didn't get the box, the individual discs are now being released piecemeal for your snacking enjoyment, with this one being the disc that people are going to get the most excited about, for obvious reasons. The album starts off with a 22 minute track recorded at the BBC in 1973 of Faust performing a medley of "The Lurcher", "Krautrock" and "Do So". Though the disc is named the "BBC Sessions", the rest of the tracks here appear to all have been recorded at Faust's Wumme studio, and with the exception of "We Are the Hallo Men" which was originally released on Munic & Elsewhere (though Recommended still persists on claiming that it was originally on The Last LP) most of these cuts are previously unreleased. Included are some nice tape experiments like "(360)" which is a mix of various stereo (possibly binaural) recordings like the Faust boys playing ping pong, plus some alternate versions of songs from So Far and Munic & Elsewhere including "So Far" and "Meer". It's all totally worthwhile, classic krautrock from one of the best bands ever. If you're new to Faust, you'll want to start with one of their proper albums (or heck, just get the whole box) but folks who already have IV, So Far and the rest should definitely invest in the BBC Sessions.
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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
We've been wanting to correct a glaring omission from our site for some time now. Well, its not so much an omission as it's an overdue update on a very old review; one that was made when our reviews served only as shelf-talkers in the store instead of entryways into the vast online catalog of our website. And now with an affordable reissue with a bonus disc of rare BBC radio sessions and alternate versions, the time is right to reappraise this mighty, weird, and awesome jewel of classic krautrock greatness that is Faust IV.
Essential as any krautrock album we can name, including Can's Tago Mago or Future Days, Amon Duul II's Yeti, or Neu! 1, Cluster, Kraftwerk etc. It's also the record that coined the term "krautrock" which is the title of the nearly 12 minute opening track, a thick pulsating rumble of motorik groove that out-Neu's Neu!. But things definitely get stranger after that with bizarre forays into reggae, pretty ballads, prog, pop and free jazz. Yet for all the weirdness, this is the record to get if you've never heard Faust before as it's their most accessible and structured. Not nearly as kaleidoscopic and avant as, So Far or Faust Tapes, and even with the genre-hopping, the songs all seem to belong together. "The Sad Skinhead" has got to be the most left-field excursion into reggae we've heard, complete with marimba passages and echoing vocals, while "Jennifer" has to be about the prettiest song ever made. Each song linked together by odd passages of detuned piano, far away screams and noisy stews of synth warbles and feedback stabs. "Giggly Smile" obviously influenced Battles recent debut Mirrors, as strange effected vocals accompany groovy prog excursions that abruptly shift tempos into one of our favorite rocking moments ever put to tape before suddenly ending, launching into the sublime folk groove of "Lauft... Heisst Das Es Lauft Oder Es Kommt Bald... Lauft". And it just keeps getting better and better.
The bonus disc features many alternate versions of the songs including a much longer version of "Just A Second (Starts Like That!)", plus rare BBC radio sessions of two songs "The Lurcher" and "Do So" and one previously unreleased piece, called appropriately "Piano Piece".
This is definitely one of those records, where we wish we could just invoke some physical force to reach out and grab you through the computer by the shoulders and just scream "Buy this already!!!!!!"
Ahh, the German sense of humor. Once, while flying somewhere, my German neighbor told me a "German joke"... it turned out to be in actuality a philosophical puzzle, and not very funny. For some reason, German jokes and joking around has this heavy sillyness that I love. It's never actually all that "funny" per se, but so so endearing!
That said, this Faust dvd opens with some 8mm footage from the 70s. The band is in their hometown of Wumme, Germany and approached by a giant panda bear who read about the band in a newspaper while tanning on the beach. It's a very strange, probably very stoned interaction set to a Faust song. Not that funny really, but totally endearing. Cause it's Faust! One of the most abstract of core Krautrock bands.
But then that's it!!! I mean, as far as actual visual documentation from the band during the 1970s. The remaining classic Faust tracks on here are set to horrendous, freshman-year-art-student video collage made recently by Faust's Zappi Diermaier as interpretations of the songs' original themes. Every track and "film" is a nauseating combination and so incredibly confusing to us. Even more puzling is why Zappi decided to add additional accompaniment to some of the audio tracks.
Man. As extremely devout Faust fans, we have to say, "WTF?!" Is there no other footage of the band -- either playing concerts, or interviews, or any photos, or then even commentary?
There's also an audio cd included that has no Faust songs, but new tracks by Zappi that are from a dvd of his solo stuff coming out in the future. Writing all this down is making us feel like we need to cry or something. Wish there was more FAUST to SEE. We don't know what Zappi was thinking. Sure do hope that all the feedback (like this) from fans will inspire the band to get something together for an actual document-worthy dvd at some point in the future.
That little nugget of Faust and the polar bear, boy. That's something special. Can't imagine what we'd do with a whole dvd full of that sorta stuff! Meanwhile, all we can do is keep on sitting around listening to Faust IV over and over again.
Forget for a second that this is a Faust album. What if it was just some unknown new band, some cd-r we got in the mail, some limited edition cassette release? Heck we've tried that thought experiment, and we'd be all over it! Telling you that it's a mysteriously murky, throbbing psychedelic freak-scene, fraught with krautrocky rhythms and tense textures. Sorta reminds us of a mix of Blues Control and Wooden Shjips... or White Hills and Expo 70... there's a druggy '60s garage vibe, industrial electronic atmosphere, blissful moodiness, and clockwork Circle-like propulsivity, all crammed into one crazy counter-intuitive whole, raw and live! Everything in the way of organ drones, harmonica blurt, echoing voices, shuffling drums, and serious dosage of searing psych-rock geetar found here were all taken from various European performances in 2006, later mixed and edited at fauststudio. We'd assume most of the tracks are pretty much unique to this disc...
Yeah, we'd be pretty into it if it was some new group! Does the fact it's a new disc by krautrock legends Faust, released by Circle's Ektro label, make it any cooler? It doesn't need to. Though if that's what it takes to get you to check it out, that's ok. Conversely, if you were like, oh just another umpteenth Faust reunion album, don't be like that. First off, Faust rule. Even today. Sure, this isn't the original line up. In fact, it's not even the ONLY current line up! Apparently, in the grand tradition of, uh, Saxon and others, there's now more than one version of Faust, each featuring different original band members, going around touring under the name. Weird. Not sure if this fractured factioning is an agreed-upon thing (to cover more ground?) or if they're in competition. Hopefully the former! It would be sad to hear that there's litigation pending.
So anyway, THIS Faust consists of Jan Wolbrandt on drums, Michael Stoll on bass (and flute), Lars Paukstat on percussion and vocals, Steven Wray Lobdell on guitar, and Hans Joachim Irmler on organ, keyboards and vocals. That's a good line up all right, they've got Lobdell in the band after all! Hence the dosage of searing psych-rock geetar previously mentioned...
Recommended, as one of the two very different and very cool live albums newly issued by Ektro that we're reviewing this list (the other one is by '80s strong-man metaller Thor, believe it or not!). Hmmm. Faust + Thor, does that sort of = Circle??
(And note, there's another new live Faust 2cd that we have in stock and hope to review soon, Od Serca Do Duszy, that's the work of the OTHER active Faust unit, featuring Jean-Herve Peron, Zappi Diermaier, and Amaury Cambuzat.)
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Wow, two new Faust titles, both in handsome cardboard sleeves...Nosferatu is a soundtrack of sorts to the classic silent film, Live documents the explosive (literally) Faust performance at last year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The "pop" aspects of Faust past may have been abandoned by the reunited band, but the psych-guitar and industrial smasheroo quotient is way up. Both discs are fine nightmare soundscapes.
And here's the other new live album from the what is also in fact the *other* Faust (mentioned a couple of lists back when we reviewed Faust's Kleine Welt cd on the Ektro label). Od Serca Do Duszy was recorded in Krakow, Poland at the wonderfully named Loch Ness Club on November 15th, 2006, by a Faust "power trio" lineup consisting of Zappi Diermaier (drums, metals, tools), Jean-Herve Peron (voice, guitars, horns) and Amaury Cambuzat (guitars, keys, voice). Note that this is an entirely different lineup than the one responsible for Kleine Welt, also recorded on tour in 2006. We'd like to think that Faust has splintered into these two different touring groups (both featuring original '70s members as well as new blood from the band's initial reunion era in the '90s) in an amicable fashion, but we don't really know. Maybe they hate each other. But we also wonder if it's just 'cause their individual schedules didn't work out to all play together, or so they could cover more ground, or 'cause they had different interests in terms of what songs should go into the band's current set?
For Diermaier/Peron/Cambuzat, that means doing some of Faust's famous old songs like "A Bit Of A Pain" and "The Sad Skinhead" alongside newer stuff and full-on improv jams. We figure that if you were AT the show, you'd want to hear a few of those old favorites. But listening to this at home, it's probably the new material that will actually be most of interest... although hearing how they mutate and reinterpret their own "hits" is cool too.
Anyway, either way, this excellently-recorded, lengthy live set is one for Faust fans, and also those into the likes of Acid Mothers Temple, really anyone looking for experimental explorations of clattery murk, with feedbacky psychedelic guitar, quasi-industrial improv chaos, plodding drums, and noisy textures! The raucous Krakow crowd certainly is into it, stoking Faust into further frenzies, including shouted vocals (in French?) among them some yelling about "George Washington!" and "George Bush!"... it must have been a memorable night. Disc two begins with two tracks (20 minutes) of pure, heavy-duty improv, which the band follow with a fairly wild rendition of their classic "It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl" to make even the old time fans happy... and then for their encore, for good measure, they launch into "Schempal Buddha", an urgent and repetitive number that fans will recognize from The Faust Tapes album.
"We've always liked the idea of releasing records which lacked conventional 'finish' in terms of production...the music should sound like bootlegs, as if recorded by someone who passed a group rehearsing or jamming and then cut the recorded material wildly together." That's a quote from Faust mentor/manager Uwe Nettelbeck circa 1973, reprinted in the liner notes to this aptly-titled odds n' ends collection, a collage of pieces recorded by the idiosyncratic krautrock legends over the past thirty years. It helps explain the sounds here, as well as the aesthetic behind their classic "Faust Tapes" album (which this echoes) and much else of their output. The material presented here will fade from stuff recorded in the early days at their communal studio directly into things put down on tape by the reunited/retrofitted incarnation of Faust just last year -- sometimes within the very same track! Mostly this is early '70s stuff, but there's a few '80s derived recordings and material from the currently active Faust line-up. It's all pretty great. Unreleased archival alternate versions of familiar Faust favorites, forgotten experiments, live bits and pieces -- wild psych guitar/effect noise fests, Stoogesy jamming, droning electronics, sweet strumming folk, jazz freakouts -- all this is woven together in a truly kaleidoscopic krautrock "patchwork" indeed. Very Faust-ian. Uwe's quote describes this perfectly.
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More so than Aphex Twin's score to a Bank of America commercial or Oval's contribution to one for Calvin Klein, Faust's appearance on a commercial for Nike has clearly been the oddest commodification of experimental music. Fortunately, the "success" of the venture has not gone to Faust's collective head... Their highly-anticipated new album Ravvivando succeeds where previous '90s ventures You Know Faust and Rien (which could be argued was more of a Jim O'Rourke album) perhaps did not. On this album, the hypnosis induced by the constant churning of percussive blasts and springy basslines is complemented by washed out drones dissolving to reveal their construction from swells of organ and guitar.
It should be noted that the resurrection of Faust about five years ago did bring a drastic change to their Krautrock mutations of pop, noise, carnival music, jazz, and general experimentation which characterized their seminal '70s records such as Faust IV or So Far. One cannot expect that a musical hibernation of 20 years would not affect the artistic process. But rather than making contextual comparisons to Faust's work from the '70s, we proclaim that Ravvivando is their best record of the '90s. So there. The new Faust is a great band, on their own merits.
Soft Cell remixes Faust?? That's right, the legendary, eccentric krautrockers Faust hit the dancefloor with the help of Soft Cell's David Ball (and one Ingo Vauk as well). The track "Wir Brauchen Dich #6", taken from Faust's last (and quite excellent)
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Need we say any more than to announce that this is finally available?! Well, okay, here's the obi blurb: "These are the first studio recordings from German group Faust in over 20 years. An aggressive collision of electronic pastiche musique concret, power tools and group improvisation results in an extraordinary return by one of the seminal experimental ensembles of all time."
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One of the BEST RECORDS EVER. That's right. And I don't think we're really going out on a limb with that claim. Certainly one of the best krautrock records ever (as are pretty much all the Faust albums, actually). This, Faust's second album, originally released in 1972, has been reissued numerous times over the years, for a while as an expensive Japanese import only, then in the crucial Wumme Years box set, and most recently by Collector's Choice as a two-on-one with Faust's self-titled debut. We still stock that for the budget-minded amongst you, but since this is such a classic, we figure some folks will want this newer, nicely digipacked reish all by its own. Unlike the two-fer, the cd booklet here includes all the full-color images (one illustration per song) that came as art prints with the original vinyl. And as well, there's new liner notes and vintage photos in there as well. Nice.
But let's get back to this best records ever business, for those that weren't already nodding in agreement. It's the missing link between The Velvet Underground and The Boredoms, we're telling you. Just listen to the mantric opener "It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl" and tell us they weren't influenced by the VU... yet taking things way further into the trance-zone, pioneering the minimal post-rock sounds of many popular indie bands today... Circle ferinstance! And for sure the Boredoms. Also, without Faust, chances are, no This Heat. No Nurse With Wound. Yep they were pioneers all right. And still sound plenty fresh 'n weird today. So Far reigns in the sound collage craziness of their selt-titled debut, tightening up into actual song-form-iness, even getting into some pleasantly lyrical poppiness... but always ready to do something violently eccentric. "Daddy, take the banana!"
Faust's third album (or fourth if you count the Tony Conrad & Faust "Outside the Dream Syndicate" album), originally released in 1973, is now available for the first time on cd with the original artwork (excepting the box set) instead of the horrible cover
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Wow! Krautrock/Faust fans have had a lot to be thankful for these past few weeks. First we are presented with the instantly-essential "Wumme Years" 5-cd box set (see AQL #104) of old Faust classics and rarities, and now we are blessed with this double cd set of new Faust material! San Francisco Faust fans disappointed by the legendary krautrock band's last SF performance (a lackluster jam-filled session at the Great American Music Hall a year or two ago) may find their faith in Faust's live abilities renewed by this album, released on our new favorite label, Ektro (run by Jussi Lehtisalo of Circle). No, they're not doing old Faust songs from "So Far" or "Faust IV", but their current improvisational efforts are very effective in a dark and droning way. As well, they do at least two songs derived from their last studio album, 1999's pretty great "Ravvivando" -- the line-up of which, minus only one guy, performs on this set. "The Land of Ukko and Rauni" (Ukko and Rauni being ancient Finnish gods, of course) documents a Faust show in Helsinki on April 20th, 2000, beginning with sub-aquatic dirge-rumble, like music for whales -- you get the sense of large, intelligent beings moving fluidly in the darkness. Soon the band is engaged in some exploratory, but quite propulsive, psych-rock, with keys, guitar (courtesy of the Davis Redford Triad's Stephen Wray Lobdell), and Zappi's drums, augmented by additional mysterious sounds (Faust's trademark proto-industrial sound effects). The textures and rhythms of this mostly-instrumental set (there's a few moments of nonsense word-blurt but nothing much) are unmistakably Faust-ian, and worthy of a double discs' investment in listening. Faust, even thirty years on, remain a potent outfit, one from which today's crop of supposedly trend-setting spacey post-rock bands could learn a thing or two.
A 5cd box set devoted to krautrock legends Faust? We were salivating from the moment we heard about it! The output of the band from 1970-73 is truly remarkable, and their work can hardly be compared to any of their contemporaries. They transcend both psych and prog, they influenced countless acts and anticipated many musical trends, from This Heat to Nurse With Wound, New Wave and No Wave, Industrial and "Post-Rock", the Boredoms old stuff to the Boredoms new stuff. Seminal musical genius that everyone should hear. And this is both a good place to start for newcomers (I envy anyone hearing Faust for the first time!) and a necessary collection for fans.
The nitty gritty details, for those who wanna know it all: Wumme refers to the schoolhouse-turned-studio that Faust producer Uwe Nettelbeck rented out at Polydor's expense (he also managed to get Polydor to buy the band all the recording gear they needed and pay for a 24-hour a day, live-in engineer.) It was under these ideal conditions that Faust recorded almost all of the material on this box set, which includes (get ready!): Faust's self-titled debut, their second album "So Far" (both of those terribly hard to find on cd, with the Japanese edition of "So Far" having been out of print for years now), the ever-popular "The Faust Tapes" (now with a track listing and indexing!) and "71 Minutes of Faust" (collecting both the "The Last LP" and "Munic and Elsewhere" LPs). And, also included in this set is an amazing disc of unreleased material, some recorded live at the BBC in 1973, plus some recently discovered & never before listened to tapes as well as the track "We Are the Hallo Men" which was originally on "Munic & Elsewhere" (though curiously credited here as having been on "The Last LP"), but previously left off of ReR's previous version of "71 Minutes of Faust". For this disc alone the set is worth the money to Faust aficionados! Then add in the 40 page booklet, illustrated with rare color photos (of them playing darts outdoors in the nude! THE NUDE!) and Super 8 stills, that features essays/memories from Faust friends/fans Chris Cutler and Peter Blegvad, and interviews with several band members as well as with their producer (the reclusive Nettelbeck) and, for the first time ever, with sound engineer Kurt Graupner!
Of course, the individual discs may be issued separately at some time (or not? all we've heard is that the BBC sessions will come out individually) but then again with those first two Faust cds being so hard to come by, and so essential, there's got to be lots of you out there you not only will want this whole box, but NEED this box. Nicely presented, clearly a labor of love, with the cds in not-fancy-but-serviceable individual digipacks (and don't worry, the paintings from "So Far" are included in a color booklet with that disc).
What can we say, other than that this may be the year of the Faust re-issue! Yet another (and quite cheap, all things considered) way to delve into the seminal work of these eccentric krautrock geniuses. Fairly well packaged, with reproductions of the original artwork and notes from the first album (no, not on clear plastic as the LP was) included, as well as the front and back cover images from "So Far" (but not the color prints found inside the original LP or in the previous cd reissues--if you want those, you gotta get the "Wumme Years" box). But, this disc comes with two pages of additional notes by Jason Gross of "Perfect Sound Forever" magazine.
The second self-released cd-r from these two turntablists, both of whom have had releases on the reknowned Bomb Records label. This time just a 25 minute excursion, but still with lots of fun party beats and clever turntablist action. Very limited.
A self-released cd-r from these two turntablists, both of whom have had releases on the reknowned Bomb Records label. Starts out with a lot of club friendly hip hop hooks and big booty rhythms, before turning more toward "Urban Revolution" style funky
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The quintessential Krautrock projects -- Faust, Can, Guru Guru, Amon Duul, and all things vaguely associated with Conny Plank -- had been huge influences on Nurse With Wound's catalogue. So it goes without saying that when Steven Stapleton got the call that Faust wanted him to produce a record of theirs, he enthusiastically leapt at the chance. What he didn't expect was that Faust only passed on a series of sloppy studio improvisations to Stapleton with the instructions to make a Faust album out of them. We can imagine that Jim O'Rourke had been given a similarly loose framework when he was granted the opportunity to produce Rein back in 1995. Just as O'Rourke took those sounds and sculpted an album which was remarkable in its similarity to classic '70s era Faust (e.g. Faust Tapes, Faust IV, So Far, etc.), Stapleton with his trustworthy cohort Colin Potter at his side has crafted an excellent pastiche of that obtuse Faust sound of mutant psychedelia which guided the more experimental proponents of prog rock, industrial, post-punk, and post-rock. Disconnected is filled with dynamic tumbling percussive riffs, rolling acoustic guitar nestled into clouds of vibrating distortion, unsettled sweeping driftwork, and stoned basslines. In other words, Disconnected sounds like a fucking great Faust album.
Unfortunately, this has been very difficult for us to get a hold of; so don't expect it to stick around for very long. We should also let you know that this is the regular edition of Disconnected. The special edition (which we didn't get) does feature two 'bonus' tracks, the first of which is called "Silence" and features just silence (some bonus!); and the second is a live track without the presence of Nurse With Wound. Nope, those ain't here; but honestly we really don't think purchasers of this regular version are missing too much.
Ok, just in case introductions are in order: Faust is the classic Krautrock band from the '70s who resurrected themselves in the '90s, demonstrating that they still knew a thing or two about making weird and avant-garde psychedelic rock music. Dalek, meanwhile, is a genre defying, indie-rock-scene-crashing rapper from New York whose album on Ipecac two years back was a big hit 'round these parts and elsewhere. The Dalek / Faust connection first became public when a Dalek cut was included on Faust's Klangbad: First Steps compilation. We then heard rumors that the two were gonna do something together...at last, here is the fruit of that unholy union! Krautrock and rap, that's a first I guess. (Krautrap? ugh.) But it makes sense in light of Dalek's allegiance to dub and electronica and Faust's interest in the same... So, how did this collab turn out? Sounds more like a Dalek record than a Faust one overall. Dark, scary soundscapes stretch out over the first track -- percussive miasma, with somewhere in there latter-day Faust guitarist Stephen Wray Lobdell (Davis Redford Triad) generating clouds of blue-black -- before Dalek starts dropping rhymes on track two, "Hungry For Now". Beats ricochet dangerously as Dalek does the urban griot routine over the grinding of the Faust factory. It's kinda in the same illbient, claustrophobic dub-sphere as Spectre and the WordSound crew, or Techno-Animal, with whom Dalek previously has worked. Faust are certainly capable of generating some heavy duty darkness -- as they have gotten older, they seem to have delved more into the Industrial-Ambient sounds their old albums perhaps presaged. You'll find no references to the surreal pop element of Faust's '70s sound here, just some hardcore hip hop in a nightmare void.
"The DJ from Hell." Dramatic turntablism, very cool.
The furious fivesome from Coalinga are finally back, dispelling rumors of suicide pacts or abductions, with nine tracks of venomous (not to mention completely retarded) death metal. For those familiar or unfamiliar with their past work, Chiropractic
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Everyone's favorite deformed "desk metallers" return with a new album sure to whip all Bungle-worshippers into a noisy metallic frenzy.
More "handicapped" "metal" for Bungle/Caroliner fans, recorded on the Head's Japan tour.
This is the second record, originally released in 1971, by Bill Fay, who we had never even heard of until recently, when we started reading how Fay was "the missing link between Nick Drake, Ray Davies and Bob Dylan" and hearing his name bandied about as an influence on groups like Six Organs Of Admittance and Current 93 among others. And once we heard this record in particular, it didn't seem so far fetched. Unlike his self titled debut album released a year earlier (and reviewed elsewhere on this list), Time Of Last Persecution is a much more immediate, stripped down record, mostly guitar based, with simple insistent piano, even some horns, but without all the swooping strings and lush orchestration that was all over the first record. And Fay's songs do indeed shine when allowed to be heard naked and exposed like this. His voice sounds so much more forceful and emotional, the simple melodic underpinning so much more effective. Even the photo on the cover, featuring a bearded and bedraggled Fay, hints at the personal intensity and intimate emotion within. Intense and incredibly moving, moody and melancholy, you can definitely here some Davies and Drake, even some Eagles, some E.L.P (at their most balladeering) and most definitely some Allman Brothers. As if the songs and the amazing vocal performance weren't enough, the record features occasional inspired and frenzied bursts of ferocious psychedelic guitar freakout from jazz legend Ray Russell!
We had never really heard of Bill Fay, at least until we started hearing him mentioned as an influence on folks like Ben Chasny of Six Organs Of Admittance, Jim O'Rourke, Current 93 and the like. Which made perfect sense when we finally heard Fay's music. A reissue of Fay's debut album, originally released in 1970, this is majestic, emotional singer songwriter stuff, simple, beautiful songs, wrapped in lushly orchestrated, sweeping strings, regal horns, totally epic and emotionally grand arrangements (think Scott Walker). The sticker on the cover boldly proclaims Fay as "the missing link between Nick Drake, Ray Davies and Bob Dylan" and while we can perhaps dismiss that as hyperbole to a certain extent, there is definitely something special about Fay's voice and his songs. They definitely work best when they tend toward the more maudlin and miserable, it's then that the Nick Drake comparison makes the most sense. The orchestral filigree has the definite downside of occasionally making some of the songs a bit to saccharin and overblown. Which is unfortunate as Fay's songs are the sort that would work just as well with just a guitar or a piano, dark and brooding, and emotionally charged, stripped to its bare essentials. That said, some of the string parts are absolutely stunning, and the horns give some of the tracks a bit of a Chicago vibe which in no way is a bad thing. Not necessarily dreary or depressive or fucked up enough to transcend their seventies singer songwriter sound, but some close listening will reveal how ultra personal and simply fantastic these songs are!
Features extensive liner notes from Fay himself as well as two bonus tracks: both songs from Fay's rare 1967 "Screams In The Ears" / "Some Good Advice" seven inch single.
Incredible reissue of this totally cracked, acid fried slab of downer synth pop outsider genius. Originally released in the early eighties, Tom Fazzini was carving out a sound that must have freaked people the fuck out back then. Even by today's standards, this stuff is out there: minimal, lo-fi, dark and druggy, psychedelic and a little bit new wave. Keyboards warble and wheeze, drum machines skitter and thump, and Fazzini's vocals, howl and croon and mewl, occasionally grunting, squealing, growling, dripping with reverb, often a volatile angry counterpoint to the warm new wave-y drift of the music underneath.
Much of Neck To Neck gets all industrial and doomy, lots of space, the synth and mechanical drums meting out a spare, abstract pound, that would almost sound right at home on a Wolf Eyes record, or even some unreleased Suicide jam. The record slips into some truly creepy dark ambience, the vocals occasionally erupt into squalls of howling-in-tongues, FX overload madness, but for the most part, Neck to Neck is dark and mysterious, a bit damaged and lysergic.
The B-side especially spends much of its time creeping and crawling, lots of buzzing low end synth, the vocals paranoid and frantic, bloopy basslines, lots of hushed shimmer, and abstract drift, that is until the record explodes into a twisted sing songy jingle, bouncy and bizarre, with what sounds like kazoos, sixties housewife background vocals, almost growly scary singing, over a monotonous rhythm, everything evolving into what sounds like a fucked up Neanderthal birthday party gone wrong, before slipping back into that incessant jazz jingle looped weirdness, only to finish the record with some gorgeous, stripped down elegiac minor key guitarscapery, depressive and downer-y, laced with slow motion circus calliope melodies and warm swells of chordal whirr.
Schizophrenic, otherworldly, damaged, demented and so goddamn great. Sounds like Ariel Pink's creepy drugged out older brother. If Fazzini was a twenty something making music today, with a bunch of limited cd-r releases under his belt, he would be the toast of the current lo-fi / warped pop / cold wave underground, as it is, all those whippersnappers mining the past best bow down, considering that the stuff they're doing now, already existed 25 years ago, and was way weirder!
What really needs to be said about Fear? One of the greatest punk bands ever. Have you ever seen the Decline of Western Civilization? Fear definitely stole the show with their fierce and frenzied audience baiting set. And then there's the time they played on Saturday Night Live at the behest of none other than John Belushi, where they were introduced by Donald Pleasance, and eventually caused over $20,000 in damage. But all that rabble rousing would be nothing but bullshit posturing if they didn't have the music to back it up. And Fear's The Record, released in 1982, said it all, a pretty much perfect punk rock record all the way through, fierce and fucked up, weirdly proggy, frantic and frenzied, politicized and irreverent, vocalist Lee Ving's over the top growled vocals leading the charge.
"Let's Have A War" is a punk rock anthem if there ever was one, with its "there's so many of us" repeated bridge and its woozy tribal verse that almost sounds like the Butthole Surfers. Then there's the goofy and tasteless "Beef Bologna", with its crooned bluesy intro, the song itself a minute of pounding punk anthem. "Camarillo" is an unsung classic, as powerful as any of the tracks on The Record, with some weird angular guitaring, some very metal riffage, not to mention some seriously Jello-like vocals. But it has to be "I Don't Care About You" that steals the show, heavy and hooky and punk as fuck with a chorus that kills, and c'mon "I Don't Care About You FUCK YOU!!" Doesn't get more punk than that, does it?
The rest of the record is overflowing with classics, the ridiculous but impossibly catchy (and very Dead Kennedys sounding) "New York's Alright If You Like Saxophones", which of course is rife with actual saxophones, and the lyrics are hilarious. "We Destroy The Family" is fierce and furious and peppered with weird metal percussion, "I Love Livin' In The City" is somehow WAY poppier than it has any right to be
Fear were one of those rare punk bands that infused their punk with plenty of pop hooks, and had serious song writing chops, all without losing any of their punkness, yet somehow making their music eminently more listenable, and making them way more accessible to folks outside the punk scene, think the Dickies, Bad Religion, The Descendents
Available on vinyl again, but whatever format, this is an essential document of West Coast punk rock, and one of our favorite punk rock records EVER.
