FAUST – BBC Sessions + – CD – RERF5

This CD captures Faust at their peak in 1973 at the BBC and adds a slew of recently unearthed material plus a couple of previously issued tracks. Apparently bewildered BBC technicians recall a steady stream of dishevelled long haired Germans wheeling strange perspex boxes into the studio. Indeed, engineer and unofficial seventh member Kurt Graupner’s work is much in evidence throughout, treating instruments, providing tape manipulations and concrete episodes. On the opening “The Lurcher”, Gunther Wusthoff’s saxophone trails off into grainy pitch-shifted clouds of reverb over a stiff proto-funk vamp, eventually boiling down into a pastoral episode of almost folkish guitar from Rudolf Sosna. Suddenly we’re into the mighty (and ironically titled) “Krautrock”, a hugely distorted throb of a riff that slowly expands and contracts while it motors to absolutely nowhere, like a dystopian take on Neu’s road music. “Party 9” overlays chirping electronics above Joachim Irmler’s magisterial fuzzed organ lines and Jean-Herve Peron’s Phil Lesh like bass. Elsewhere, distorted children’s voices scream ‘Happy Birthday’ over a rock and roll piano riff punctuated with sleepy acid fuzz guitar. Wonderful. An alternative take of So Far (title track of the second Faust record) marries a stripped down take on Temptations style psychedelic funk with deep space electronics, while the melancholic sub-aqua piano of the closing “Meer” is simply beautiful. A fine release from Chris Cutler’s ReR label, who singlehandedly kept the Faust name alive after the bands demise in 1974, thus providing the inspiration for their reformation in the 90s. Great stuff.

Peter Marsh / BBC Music