Faust
71 Minutes Of Faust

If I think back to the effort I made at the end of the '70s to track down the ‘Wumme’ material by Faust, that is, everything recorded between 1971-73 in the historic studio near Hamburg, it makes me laugh and cry for all the kilometers traveled, the phone calls, and the money spent. I couldn’t imagine back then that in 2000 a simple 60 euro box set would be released, including the entire official discography, the 1973 BBC Sessions (largely included in the fourth album) and especially the lost album ‘Munic and Elsewhere,’ and the singles from 1973, along with the surviving takes from that last recording attempt, which was later aborted due to a definitive lack of funds. Anyone with an ear and interest in German music from the Seventies, which goes down in history under the name of krautrock, knows very well that Faust are the spearhead of the movement, with only Can reasonably contending with them for the throne. Many enthusiasts, however, find that while Can, with their strong musical training and awareness and planning unknown to the members of the Faust collective, ultimately lack precisely that element of unknowing electroacoustic madness that always allowed Hervé Peron and his companions to put on record more or less everything that was recorded, and except for a few exceptions, the first take was usually good, including real-time electronic treatments, with more than brilliant results. I’m not reviewing the first album (many already exist), so I won’t talk about how the collective was assembled as best as possible and isolated in a big building thanks to a project financed by a music magazine, and how they were forced to create the masterpiece in question, a true manifesto of the genre and eloquent testimony of the constant improvisational method adopted by the group. At the beginning of 1974, the band was receiving flattering artistic responses, with four wonderful albums in three years universally acclaimed as masterpieces, but no money, and some of them didn’t even have a job to put food on the table. The attempt with ‘Faust IV’ did not yield appreciable economic results (the vinyl was circulating in stock in Europe), and Virgin refused to finance further projects, despite the fact that material was still being recorded (Mike Oldfield was right: Richard Branson, you’re a jerk). Even Uwe Nettelbeck, the journalist/producer who ideated the group (wanting to respond to the dominance of British rock) and got them a contract, had to surrender to the evidence, also because he had his own problems and could not expose himself too much as a non-combatant member of the Baader Meinhof. In 1975 Faust threw in the towel and surrendered, bankruptcy was inevitable, but the final act was the hand-distribution of a self-produced tape called ‘Faust V’ (I own an ‘unofficial’ copy transferred in Italy), containing the sessions already recorded and secretly mixed. In 1979, Recommended Records (ReR) made a considerable economic and compiling effort for their possibilities and actually published ‘Munic and Elsewhere’ and also a couple of singles containing tapes from ’71-’73, all unfortunately in dramatically limited editions. This material had indeed been the subject of a frenzied search since ’75, as the musical importance of Faust was recognized and the group was promoted as the progenitor even of the punk, industrial, and new wave movements (all of this can be found in spades in Faust’s records, along with a lot of Zappa-like cabaret and massive and amused doses of avant-garde and noise). It would take until 1988 for this material to be collected, again curated by ReR, in a precious CD called ’71 Minutes Of Faust’, which excludes only one practically inaudible track and the BBC Sessions of 1973 for reasons of space, which will be released in 1996 (but a good part of the material, as mentioned, was already included in the ‘Faust IV’ tracklist). Although it includes very heterogeneous material, ’71 Minutes’ (the tracklist of which will be rethought and corrected again in 1996) is as cohesive to listen to as any of their other projects (cf. 'Faust Tapes'), considering the constant musical coordinates of the group and the same inspiring force and fixed points that decreed their originality and success among fans. An indispensable feature of the Faust sound remains the very peculiar percussive section, with a typically bright tone and slightly delayed on the beat, elementary in its structure as in the case of Maureen Tucker; the stubborn bass, processed voices, fuzz guitars like Oldfield’s, the omnipresent noise, the electronic treatment reserved for all tracks, and the constant sensation of not knowing at all what will happen in the next twenty seconds of the piece, whether it be a suite or a short song. The two long and erratic compositions ‘Munic Yesterday’ and ‘Knochentanz’ and the other extended piece ‘Chromatic’, which form the backbone of the lost 1974 album, testify to a probable return to the improvised form of the origins (compared to the more structured and almost progressive compositions of ‘Faust IV’), even though we will never know what Faust would have done with such outlined material. About ten other shorter tracks instead represent demos and impromptu recordings taken from the band’s entire career, in 1988 simply called ‘Party’ because in the optimistic intentions of ’74 they would have been collected in a further album rightly called ‘Faust Party’. In a play of references and arrangements, the tracks correspond to alternative versions of ‘Lauft…’, ‘Giggy Smile’, ‘Je Mal Aux Dents’ (which in ‘Faust Tapes’ had no title), all very interesting and of as much value as those released in due course. Soon Faust would find the desire and the record contract necessary to get back on track, with slightly less clarity but madness and noise intact, and they would begin to emerge from the status of cult bands by intensifying their live activity significantly, in a constantly open formation (but the legendary drummer Werner ‘Zappi’ Diermaier would never be missing). Dear massive Zappi, his site is always active (http://www.zappi-w-diermaier.com/) and you can write to him whenever you want, he will respond happily because he is amazed to have become a myth and is always surprised and enthusiastic, and sells exclusive Faust recordings and videos for a few euros. No Paypal or credit cards, cash in an envelope and however it goes: absolutely consistent with the group's philosophy. I’ve always received everything.