Faust – Cest Com Com Complique (album review)
Like many bands that I now love, I was a late comer to Faust. My introduction to their music was the incredibly-varied IV, which was alternately noisy, grooving, and even downright funny at times, and I eventually went ahead and got their excellent The Wumme Years boxset when that came out. After a short, but prolific run, the original incarnation of the band broke up over thirty years ago, while various members continued working on different projects here and there.
A few years ago, a couple of the original members of the band (Jean-Herve Peron and Werner Diermaier) joined up with the Frenchman Amaury Cambuzat and started recording again. After a series of collaborations (with everyone from Dälek to Nurse With Wound), CDR and DVD releases, the trio is unleashing their first official album under the Faust name in C'est Com… Com… Complique' on the Bureau B label.
After such a long break in hearing from the group, I don’t know what I was expecting, but this new release sounds both familiar and slightly different than I expected. It’s familiar in that it’s another varied effort from the group. I could re-use the three adjectives that I stated above in describing IV, and it’s even more than that. It’s more aggressive than I thought it would be, with many songs that squall with huge guitars and while primal rhythms tie things down with a thick underpinning. There’s a folky song, a song almost entirely done with guttural vocals, stoned-out riffs, and another piece that spirals almost completely out of control with dazzling orchestral samples.
So yeah, it’s all over the place, but if you’ve been following and enjoying Faust over the years that’s a good thing. “Kundalini Tremolos” kicks things off with over nine minutes of cascading guitar sheets, heavy breathing, and percussion that builds from quiet chimes to pounding force. “Ce Chemin Est Le Bon” is the drugged-out piece I mentioned above, and it drones through a sort of pitch-warbling haze that spikes with a couple white-hot blasts just to keep the listener awake.
For my money, it doesn’t get much better than “Bonjour Gioacchino,” which basically sounds like it’s starting mid-track and doesn’t let up for over five minutes, with relentless drums and guitar howls that eventually melt down and turn into a spiraling nightmare of string swells and rubbery bass. It’s ominous and incredibly fun at the same time.
“Bonjour Gioacchino” – Faust
On the other side of the equation is the more pastoral 2 minutes of “Lass Mich, Version Originale,” which shows off their still-great range before they again conjure up nightmares with the almost 14 minute album-titled closer, which revels in dissonance and an almost destructive improvisational feel.
“Lass Mich, Version Originale” – Faust
Purists may balk at the idea of a completely different line-up releasing an album under their original name (especially without their essential producer Uwe Nettelbeck, who passed away in 2007, at the board), but I have to say that I went into this release with a healthy dose of skepticism in my mind and the revamped trio won me over. It’s rough-around-the-edges and doesn’t really fall into any real conventions while at the same time being seriously enjoyable. It’s definitely not for everyone, but if you’re a fan of the original group and want to hear something that’s not quite on the safe side, this is definitely one to hunt down.
January 3rd, 2010 at 8:59 pm
[...] Faust – C’est Com… Com… Complique’ (Bureau B) This isn’t quite the original lineup of the legendary krautrock group, but damned [...]