Faust

Back in the late sixties and early seventies the german music scene was very big on experimentation, so much so that a lot of styles that we currently accept as established genres...well those guys* invented* them, for instance Kraftwerk started around this time. Faust are one of the inventors of 'industrial' music. They started doing it in 1972 or so, by literally incorporating sounds of industry into their music, banging metal, factory noises.... many of the bands who would subsequently call themselves 'industrial' merely had a tinny metallic guitar sound to identify them from normal rock.... Today they are playing a live soundtrack for the 1938 silent Dracula film,' Nosferatu'. There are few bands who could even dream of attempting to do this kind of thing, and even fewer who could carry it off.The only other live soundtrack I can think of is Neil Young's movie soundtrack to 'Dead Man' by Jim Jarmusch .

The stage looks like a rusty scrapyard covered in cobwebs, blowing in the draught. It's quite hard to describe the gig, because it was one and a half hours of improvised avant-garde music, solid and unbroken. I can't give you song titles! Now..if ambient is usually designed to tap into your soul on a frequency that makes it relax...well this was designed to tap into a frequency that made your soul feel on edge, afraid, tense.... there was a lot of big bass rumble and feedback...channelled and effected, eery flutes and double bass.... sub bass keyboards... but the percussion... ...Lars and Zappi banged, tapped, sledgehammered, angle grinded, drum rolled....... literally.... the tension built and built.. culminating in a part where Zappi was smashing short lengths of scaffolding into a burning beam, dripping with sweat at the heat of the flames, a musical blacksmith, smelting sound on a burning forge

.... and then it stopped.The ominous earthshaking sub bass replaced by quiet wind noises and a tiny glockenspiel, seemingly in the distance, hold your breath... the tension very gradually increases...until....

The end... more foley artist sound effects with a flute playing pretty languid melodies... and then screaming applause as the one and a half hour improvisation concludes.

It felt like watching a piece of art. Made me* really* disappointed in subsequent industrialists, who really are nowhere near as hardcore as the originator of the genre.

This show is on tour around the country for the next six days and I'd recommend it to any connoisseur of innovation and experimentation. It is not at all commercial, you won't go home whistling the tunes, but you may, like me, go home feeling as wound up as you did after seeing 'Silence of The Lambs'... The stuff of nightmares, an artistic triumph.