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Album Review

Faust
Faust is Last Klangbad

Article written by Kev O - May 30, 2010

Faust is Last

Faust need no introduction*…kling-klang-bang-scrape-thud…so begins Faust is Last (their** first studio album in 10 years and a double CD of 22 tracks at that) as what sounds like a concrete mixer is hauled and dumped across a floor, metal screeches and whines like whale song, a low sax bellows and a child’s xylophone tinkles out a simple melody (‘Brumm und Blech’). It is a beautiful piece. As with so many of these tracks, what at first sounds like so much cacophony, on repeated listens reveals subtle rhythms and juxtapositions which seem crazy, funny, playful. Instruments, recorded in the red-on-the-level-meter, swirl swathes of sound - organ, guitars, saxes, synth, and some of loudest drumming I have heard in years – play out moody, eerie soundtracks, soundscapes - but Faust have always balanced their sound cut-up experiments with rock and pop and here is no exception. ‘Feed the greed’ could be industrial goth (think NIN, Ministry), whilst ‘Hit me’, ‘I don’t buy your shit no more’, ‘Babylon’ turn to minimal three chord rock. CD1 (Faust A) ends with the brief, melancholic ‘Day out’, a fumbled piano and plaintive voice crying There’s hope left, left in my soul…sounding all the more plaintive due the frankly unbearable white noise that is ‘Cluster fur cluster’ that precedes it (!). Disc 2 (Faust Z) contains similarly wonderful stuff as on CD1, a highlight being ‘Ozean’ with its tom-tom beat and fading in/out overloud organs/sax sounding like foghorns out at sea whilst the lyric I feel so good to day I could cry is drawled out. Even after two weeks of listening this album is still revealing more of itself. prang-drang- krang

* ok, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faust_(band)
** When I say ‘their’ there are of course two Faust groups, each containing an original member or two. This is the Irmler group.

Links:
http://www.klangbad.de