FAUST 1971-1974
BUREAUB
Bloody-minded thrills bottled.
By Louis Pattison
A sonic revolution: Faust in 1971
JUERGEN D. ENSTHALER
9/10
“THERE is no band more mythical than Faust,” wrote Julian Cope in Krautrocksampler, his grand survey of German kosmische music. If Faust are mythic, maybe it’s because the group – formed in 1970 in the counterculture ferment of Hamburg, West Germany – remain resistant to category. Their immediate peers in ’70s German progressive music often felt like the embodiment of certain concepts.
Kraftwerk were about the bold march of technology; Can, improvisation as liberation; Tangerine Dream, the sweeping expanse of space. Perhaps what makes Faust mythical is that they are so difficult to pin down.
In part this was a question of personnel. Faust had its leaders – drummer Werner “Zappi” Diermaier, bassist Jean-Hervé Péron and the underground journalist turned impresario-cum-producer Uwe Nettelbeck – but the group operated as an anarchic collective in which individual contributions were subsumed within a unified whole. In part it was their sound, which encompassed bucolic folk, avant-garde sound collage, synthesiser experimentation and fuzz-wreathed freakouts, that beat a path to the distant horizon. All this, and Faust were funny– humorous in that distinctly German way that translates awkwardly into English.