Anyone incredulous at Noel Gallagher employing a scissor player on stage of late would have their brains fried by Faust’s knitters. Sitting either side of Werner “Zappi” Diermaier’s drumkit, two middle-aged ladies clack out mittens that go on for yards at a time, occasionally scarfing to a neck-warming climax. They’re a symbol that avant-garde adventurism is a lifelong endeavour, and more than 40 years on, Faust are still casting off into unwritten sonic patterns.
Beloved of Julian Cope and bloodline ancestors of Spiritualized, Tortoise, shoegaze and desert rock, Faust were key players in the rock wing of early 1970s krautrock, as kin to Floyd and Beefheart as Can and Neu! Numerous wilderness periods and lineup changes have left them as two active bands, a kind of krautrock Bucks Fizz, but the branch centred around Diermaier and “art-errorist” bassist Jean-Hervé Péron – who looks more like Jethro Tull’s flute roadie, to be fair – is the busiest and boldest. In 2014, they released jUSt, an album of skeletal compositions for other artists to build upon, and this year delivered Fresh Air, recorded while touring the US with guest musicians at each location, Damo Suzuki-style.
This first of a three-night residency is relatively light on cacophonous sound collages, but it’s still utterly bewitching. Whether bowing absorbing kosmiche drones from their guitars on opener Rund Ist Schoen or beating tribalist rhythms from sheets of metal, Faust are a band unbounded. Anything could happen – Pythagorus finds Péron reciting Pi to fourteen decimal places (“we’re learning two more numbers every day”), and at one point they tune in to a Radio 4 drama and encourage the knitters to freestyle over it.
Péron’s words aspire to the cerebral, tackling environmental pollution and the refugee crisis on Listen to the Fish and the rise of rightwing politics on one-chord cataclysm Fresh Air, but Faust’s impact is more visceral. Some crescendos hit like a shaft of sunlight piercing an ancient tomb to illuminate an elemental nugget of rock’n’roll, and the highlight comes when Péron upends a metal bin and attacks it with an angle grinder and drill, dancing through the spray of sparks like a welding Bez. It makes for the catchiest melody of the night. So the message, Noel, is clear. Drop the scissors, you want a Black + Decker sander tuned to A sharp.
