Faust

Founded in Hamburg in 1969, Faust set up a studio in rural Wümme, Lower Saxony, releasing four albums between 1971 and 1973 that blew apart the rock song form. Drawing on John Cage and the Velvet Underground, they forged an anarchic mix of rock, electronica, and tape collage – for which the British press coined the term Krautrock. Faust promptly made it a song title on their fourth album, the last to feature the original line-up of Jean-Hervé Péron, Hans Joachim Irmler and Werner “Zappi” Diermaier. Recorded at Virgin Records’ studio in Oxfordshire – whose bosses waited in vain for commercial German pop – Faust flirted with reggae and folk, deployed sequencers, wah-wah and fuzz at will: “a subtle dismantling of rock structure”, Pitchfork called it, “where beauty and absurdity coexist without hierarchy”. As the very last concert of this year’s Summer Festival — and as a bridge to Kampnagel’s multi-year renovation phase –
Faust, led by Jean-Hervé Péron, will now perform “Faust IV” with an eight-piece lineup ranging from Péron’s daughter Jeanne-Marie (b. 1990) to Chris Cutler (Henry Cow, b. 1947). The story continues.