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Rating: We used to listen to Faust’O in total secrecy.
A masonic sect that passed tapes under the desks, not so much to avoid being caught by the teacher, but to avoid having to explain to those who thought music was only the Sunday disco that there was something else. Nerd stuff, as we were. Or slightly more mature than our age.
And then that voice advancing in jerks seemed to us something very new, strange, important, adult, sick. We knew nothing about Bowie, Talking Heads, Devo, Ultravox… “I’ve been in your room breaking mirrors” we discovered only three or four years later that it was a plagiarism from 'Breaking Glass' by Berlin-era Bowie. But, to be honest, what did we care. “It doesn’t matter who was the province and who the empire: the point was the fire” (Battisti/Panella, Hegel). That was what Faust'O ignited in our young adolescent minds. “Every fire I light propels me towards the sky”. A sense of belonging. Then, suddenly, at the Coop when tapes were still on the highway-style rack, it appeared, top left. Faust’O, "Love Story".
The new Faust’O album. No one had talked about it, not even Ciao 2001. New Faust’O. I rushed down the escalator, flew to the phone booth.
“France’, Faust’O is out”.
“New?”
“Love Story”
“Get it”.
Twenty minutes later, bicycle permitting, we were in front of my stereo. Tape unwrapped following the cellophane with the ES stamped on it. Six songs. Titles in English. “Could it be another Out now?” Out now was the album we liked the least, too difficult. Plus, it couldn’t be quoted in our diaries. Happy faces turned puzzled.
The first track, 'Exhibition Of Love'. Drums, bass and voice, nothing else. Obsessive and piercing bass, drums with regular but intricate beats. Monotone voice, almost a mantra. No variation, no opening. A long declamation, a single theme. So was the second track, so was the third. Repeated six times, for six tracks. All like that.
And for those six tracks, we were on the couch in front of the stereo without batting an eyelid, captured by an obsessive mantra we didn’t understand, didn’t like at all, but that we couldn’t neither comment on nor turn off. Once it ended, I never listened to it again. Because it was in that single listen that everything happened.
Something that has to do with rites of passage.
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Other reviews
By Caciucco
The album can be considered an experimental pop work with influences from P.I.L’s Metal Box.
It is a very nice album that, however, requires multiple listens to be appreciated.
