Faust: Live at Klangbad Festival

The Faust performance features Jochen Irmler and one other figure from the group’s early ’70s origins, Arnulf Meifert, apparently absent from Faustian circles for many years before resurfacing to contribute percussion and noisemakers to this line-up, which is completed by the very wonderful Steven Wray Lobdell on guitar, Lars Paukstaton percussion and vocals, Michael Stoll on electric and upright bass, and Ralf Meinz (of Zeitkratzer) on drums. They’re shown playing in a marquee accompanied by a simple-but-effective psychedelic light show, and it’s an engrossing watch, as they run through a set of rumbling, propulsive pieces that successfully fuse organic and industrial elements in a way that has become this Faust’s trademark. Ralf Meinz may not have the elemental power of original Faust drummer Zappi W. Diermaier but he keeps the whole thing driving along with aplomb. Lobdell, inscrutable behind dark glasses and a forest of hair and beard, scrubs at his guitar, emitting a hail of fire and lifting his bandmates’ dirge-like improvisations into molten psych-fuzz territory. That’s the basic MO throughout, although the musical territories explored range from some of the most straightforwardly structured rock ever to carry the Faust name (“Beat That”), to some of their most challenging scrabble and twitter abstraction, on “Dschungelbar”. This latter piece evolves into the best of the set, taking flight on a space funk underpinning that Michael Stoll conjures from his upright bass.
There’s an interesting insight into the group’s dynamics towards the end of this footage, when they finish the set and have a breather before some members return to the stage for an encore: this seems to take Paukstat and Lobdell by surprise, the former remonstrating with Irmler: “It was such a lovely ending.. it’s bullshit to play more” (helpfully subtitled for non-German viewers). But they work out the tension in another cauldron of improvisation, and everyone seems happy at the end.