[Editor's Note:  Best Album Cover of 2009... no contest!]

Approaching the 40th anniversary of their inception, Faust return to show the newcomers how it’s done with their new studio album C’est Com…Com…Compliqué. Original members Jean-Hervé Person and Werner “Zappi” Diermaier team up with Amaury Cambuzat from Ulan Bator to revisit material previously mixed by Nurse With Wound in 2006. Armed with a new outlook and a fresh label, they’re poised to re-stake their sizable territory in the avant-rock world. 

Following their 2007 performance at the Rock in Opposition festival in France, the trio present their first release through Bureau B, “Where easy listening, krautrock, jazz, grooves and electronica share the same bed.” The last time we saw a proper album from Faust was the awkward but ultimately rewarding collaboration with spook glitch-hop producer Dalek in 2004 on Derbe Respect, Adler, prompting concerns of a major change in the band’s style, leaving die-hard fans polarized and scratching their heads. It became unclear whether there was enough of that original spark left to carry the group into the 2000s. But, lest we forget, back in the 1970s, Faust made several albums that to this day remain in the highest echelon of rock, the kind of music other bands hear and think, “I’ll have what she’s having!” So, if they decide there’s still enough left in the well to take a victory lap 40 years later, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Compliqué’s opener, “Kundalini Tremolos,” is an appeal to several decades of Faustians. A chopping samurai tremolo stutters and pitch-shifts as someone breathes fanatically in the background. The drums make a clear statement early on that they will not be categorized as “motorik.” I accept your conditions. In fact, the album spends most of its time downplaying the more bombastic elements of kraut-rock in favor of the collage takes first envisioned on The Faust Tapes. The directionless pace and patch-work will likely remind newcomers of The Books. Especially in, “Petits Sons Appétissants,” which borders on avant-pop. Cymbals blast out like depth charges over an electric keyboard and cordial acoustic guitar musings. Most of the song’s dynamics rest upon a Belmondo-like monologue that rambles in-between the noise as it gets more and more anguished.

“Accroché á Tes Lévres,” pushes a nervous organ droll into the spotlight. It tapers and granulates while Zappi Diermaier starts dusting off his drum kit, sculpting a pensive march on the toms. The french dialogue becomes free-form and begins to mirror the flustered yelps of Yamantaka Eye. It’s hard to really compare Faust to anybody given how idiosyncratic their sound is, but I keep hearing the Boredoms, them having elected to give rock it’s daily dose of Dadaism since Faust’s initial break-up. This is most exemplified on “Stimmen,” an interlude of sorts featuring constipated gargling and chants, and “En Veux-Tu Des Effets, En Violå,”sounding straight outta Super Ae with its whiteout phasers oscillating blindly.

For the most part, the album is strictly a catch-and-release game. It works to heighten anticipation, and then pulls the rug out from under you. There are rarely any explosions, but when they finally do go off, they do it big. “Bonjour Giacchino,” is a lust-filled squall of hot distortion, clumsy snare rolls, and chrome whales calls piercing through the fog. Then it diverges into a bizzare Flight of the Valkyrie -meets-Clark mash-up that stands in jarring contrast to the playfulness that characterizes most of the album. To further confuse you they follow it with, “Lass Mich, Version Orinale,”which plays like an updated version of Faust IV’s gentle time-capsule, “It’s a Bit of Pain.” .

The album closes with title track, “C’est Com Com Compliqué,” where tin off-beat narcoleptic drums fumble and snap-to-attention while drawers are emptied and subsequently thrown across the room. A shopping cart in need of some serious oiling squeaks and scrapes about, reminding me of how founding member Hans Irmler once decided, “Anything can be music and thus anything can be an instrument.” Rides, cowbells, and chattering trombones tease us for a few minutes, giving all the signals to floor it. Then scronk goes the everything into a hellish frenzy that is ultimately overcome once again by Faust’s diminishing attention span, and humbly recedes back.

Too musique concréte to join modern kraut offspring such as Cloudland Canyon or Stereolab, and too unsettling to fall in with quirky collage-artists like The Books or Lucky Dragons, Faust remain one of the few successful bands that are legitimately hard to classify. And thus, I can only evaluate this against their own back catalogue. While it lacks the radical mysticism that helped their early efforts contribute towards a new movement in German rock music, it does retain traces of their palpable ambition and originality, ensuring it to be one of 2009’s more exciting releases.

C’est Com…Com…Compliqué is available through Bureau B on Feb 27th, and hits stores the following Tuesday.

Fagen-Becker Rating for Quality:

MP3 :::
Faust – Bonjour Gioacchino
Faust – Ce’ Chemin Est Le Bon

Long time no write.  I’ve been too busy sorting through the copious amounts of hate mail I’ve received for calling the new Animal Collective record slightly disappointing.  Anyway, I figured that there hasn’t been much Super Swingin’ Mix action happening as of late, so that seemed  fitting for the first entry of the year.

Quite a lot of winter left to go for those of us living in the humid continental climate zone who experience four distinct seasons.  I dunno about you, but I enjoy expansive, sparse, spacey, folk-inclined music during frigid winter evenings, when there’s a shimmering blanket of frost on the ground and a stillness in the air.  Maybe you don’t.  If so, too bad, because that’s what this evening’s mix is about.  Eight club bangers carefully sequenced and best enjoyed after dark.

MP3 :::
Broadcast – Unchanging Window
Jessica Bailiff – Evidence
Grouper – Stuck
Chef Menteur – Europa
Faust – Giggy Smile
Red House Painters – Mistress
The Byrds – Draft Morning
Marmoset – Winter