Gig: Faust

Faust / Not the Wind, Not the Flag

SPK Polish Combatants Hall. Sunday, October 4, 2009.

Sometimes when you're improvising your way through life, the contingencies you have to deal with aren't the contingencies you were planning on. Keep this in mind.

I was intrigued but nervous when the announcement for this show made the rounds. I mean, a chance to see a legendary and highly-influential band — legendary Krautrock unit Faust. Or, kinda, half of Faust. A rupture in the original collective has led to an unusual turn where there are now two co-existing units operating under the Faust name, each working out different elements of the original sound. This unit, consisting of original members Zappi Diermaier (pummelling drummer) and Jean-Hervé Peron ("art-errorist", provocateur, bassist) is now supplemented by James Johnston (ex-Bad Seeds) and Geraldine Swayne. But they still have the original cement mixer out on tour and a rep as a good live unit.

Headed up the stairs into the Polish Combatants Hall under an elaborate Bucky Fuller-esque geodesic entrance arch made of twigs — a holdover, I was guessing, from the previous night's Nuit Blanche installation. But it turned out that a fair amount of effort had been put into the presentation of the hall proper, with slightly spooky gouaches flanking the stage as well as being draped across the floor. There were also transparent balloons tumbling underfoot and in the centre of the room, a dangling sculpture of water-filled balloons.¹ In lieu of an elaborate lighting rig, there was several old lamps on the stage. And beyond that, the musical set-up was visually interesting. What with the cement mixer taking up a good chunk of real estate on the stage, there was gear spilling over onto the floor in a row in front, and beyond that, the openers' gear. That took up most of the space up to the paintings on the floor, with the early arrivals starting to accumulate behind that.

I was interested to see what the crowd was going to be like for this one. "There was a time, like, say, 10-15, 20 years ago, when our audience was of a certain age, and had a beard, and were mostly male, and would think a lot and would be heavily intellectual," said Peron in an interview, and, to be honest, that was about the kind of crowd I was expecting. As it turned out, this was pretty much exactly the case, a male-heavy crowd, skewing older, and laden with the sort of guys who you could probably engage in arguments about optimal speaker positioning and the merits of various record producers.² There were, as is usual for shows like this at SPK, chairs lining the sides of the walls, but soon guys were pulling the chairs out to the middle of the floor to get in closer.

Starting things off were Not the Wind, Not the Flag³, a local duo composed of Brandon Valdivia (drums, etc.) and Colin Fisher (guit, sax), both busy members of the local improvisational music scene.⁴ Fisher played guit with a semi-circle of pedals arrayed around him on the floor — including one that I believe was mixing in a keyboard loop. That was one ingredient of a slow build, five minutes or so of the the music gaining intensity. It took about a dozen minutes for the swell to build, before it faded and reprised in an echo of itself. The middle of the set was a quiet valley with eastern-sounding flutes, played by both musicians, until Valdivia kicked into a fast beat and Fisher replied with his guit, building up to a shred-y crescendo. With the pedals sustaining some noise, he switched over to sax to close out the set, playing some energetic runs. Lasting a half-hour, there was a nice flow here and the well-explored ideas moved at a pace that kept everything fresh. The audience was well into it. Nice work.

Check out an excerpt from this performance here.

In between sets, another indicator of the breakdown of the crowd: I went over to the bathroom, only to find a queue forming, while women had no wait to go in and out.⁵ Meanwhile, the crowd, now fairly well built up, was getting dammed up behind the invisible line behind the artworks on the floor, a situation resolved when Jean-Hervé Peron came out to invite everyone to move closer. The bricabrac was pushed aside and it ended up being a mix of people right up against the instruments, sitting on the floor, rows of people sitting on their chairs and those preferring to stand. Peron, while saying he was giving the smokers outside a chance to finish up, gave a little pep talk to the waiting crowd: "make sure we're not serious about nothing, and make sure we take the time to revert to infantility, spontaneity and all that kind," he said, before retreating back for another ten minutes.

Once Faust took the stage — and, um, the stage-front environs — they started with an instrumental that I think one could reasonably call krautrock-y, about six minutes of carefully contained rhythms with increasingly unhinged guitars and keyb sounds. Not revelatory, with a good groove and a nice table setter. Then Peron stepped into the crowd, passing around uninflated balloons, to be blown up and the air released in a collective squeaking symphony. As this happened, the band were joined by Brandon Valdivia and Colin Fisher, who joined in on an improvised jam that resolved itself into "Listen to the Fish".⁶ And then thundering drums announced "Fresh Air", another rocker, that was getting along for a couple minutes and settling into a groove when suddenly, most of onstage power cut out.

Given that this is a band filled with a love for improvisation and spontaneity, wanting to do more than just a "rock show", they rolled with the punch. Johnston switched to piano, Peron picked up an acoustic guitar and the band played a most-unexpected unplugged segment, leading off with "The Sad Skinhead", which roused appreciative recognition from the crowd. After another tune and a brief jaunt through "Miss Fortune" from 1971's self-titled album ("I lift my skirt when Voltaire speaks, his mouth full of garlic.") there was power back on stage, though apparently no monitors working.

Faust unplugged? Check out a sample here.

The band plugged back in and went back into their setlist, sounding a little ragged and unable to hear themselves — "we are having heavy problems with the sound", Peron commented, still sounding, at this point, more apologetic than unhappy. It's unfortunate that the band was thus crippled, as it was apparent that this was a powerful unit — one number that worked well featured Johnston's unflashy, harsh-edged guitar backing a lyrical spoken-word piece from Swayne. Then the band launched into the primal stomp of "It's A Rainy Day (Sunshine Girl)", which was cruising along — about seven minutes in and feeling like it could percolate for several more, when, suddenly, the power cut out again.

This, evidently, was the band's breaking point. Still apologising, Peron announced that the band was done. At almost exactly sixty minutes of fits and starts, it never quite felt like things were getting off the ground. A vague sense of frustration could be felt in the hall as people looked quizzically at each other and made their way out. A bit of a disappointment — at some level I wanted more, and better. Looked at another way, though, if you subscribe to that whole "the perfect is the enemy of the good" school of thought then this show was arguably a masterpiece. And, if nothing else, a unique night.

Listen to a sample of Faust rockin' out here.

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¹ These would later cause some apprehensive upward glances from the guy beside me, standing right below them during the show and feeling an occasional drip.

² To be clear, this isn't making fun — I feel pretty at home among this tribe. Perhaps another indication of what kind of music enthusiasts were attracted to a show like this was the fact that I noted, besides myself, at least two other tapers on the floor, plus possibly someone else set up at the sound board. And some people with a fancy video camera as well.

³ Googling the band's name brings up this Zen epigram:

Two monks were arguing about a flag. One said: 'The flag is moving.'

The other said: 'The wind is moving.'

The sixth patriach happened to be passing by. He told them: 'Not the wind, not the flag; mind is moving.'

This is probably as evocative of what this band was doing as any description I could come up with.

⁴ Fisher lists more than twenty current projects on his myspace page.

⁵ On the rare occasions that this happens, I'm amazed that no women stop to point and mock about the shoe being on the other foot.

⁶ Despite being seminal post-punk direction pointers, it's essential to remember that Faust were always essentially hippies. For all of their sonic influence, this commune-happy strand of their origins kinda gets swept under the rug.