Just Us

Faust for all. The Krautrock legends lay down the musical foundations for everyone else to make something of their own. "j US t" - pronounced "Just Us" - is the new album from legendary Hamburg band, Faust. Founding members Jean-Herve Peron and Zappi Diermaier have laid down 12 musical foundations, inviting the whole world to use them as a base on which to build their own music. The tracks presented by Peron and Diermaier are clearly, intrinsically typical of Faust in their own right, yet offer enough space for completely different works to develop. Which is exactly what they hope will happen. While Diermaier largely remains true to his habitual handiwork - drums and percussion - Peron, as we might expect, incorporates all manner of unusual sonic sources alongside his bass, various string instruments and piano, even using a sewing machine as a metronome. Tracks like "nur nous" and "ich bin ein pavian" show that Faust have lost none of their predilection for avant-garde Dadaism and improvisation. Peron and Diermaier actually surprise US with folkloristic excursions ("cavaquinho," "gammes"). in short, there is something for everyone to work with here. Peron and Diermaier await the results with bated breath. Faust will follow the same principle on the accompanying tour by inviting local artists to collaborate with them on stage. The history of the band: "There is no group more mythical than Faust." Thus wrote English musician and eccentric Julian Cope. Which says it all really, neither the habitus nor the music of the Hamburg group was easy to grasp. While some lauded Faust as the best thing that ever happened to rock, others dismissed them as shameless dilettantes. Their collage of Dadaism, avant garde rock and free improvisation radically divided opinion. When the first LP was unleashed on the world in 1971, Faust were very much the prophet in their own land, as the saying goes: few were interested in listening to their music - in Germany. Not so across the Channel: this is where Faust's career really kickstarted. These monoliths of avant-garde rock sold 100,000 copies of their album the Faust Tapes. More than 40 years after their debut, Faust have come up with another archetypical album: inspiring, innovative, unpredictable, crossing boundaries, anarchic - Faustian!