Tony Conrad with Faust - Outside The Dream Syndicate

At first a small and hypnotic record that quietly becomes possessive and a monster. Let it lean into you. Give it some time. Put it on. Get in your hammock and let the screws work their way in.

___________________

AMG: Recorded over a span of three days in 1973, Outside the Dream Syndicate was Tony Conrad's first official release; though also credited to the celebrated Kraut rock band Faust, it's primarily a showcase for Conrad's minimalist drone explorations, an aesthetic fascinatingly at odds with the noisy, fragmented sound of his collaborators. Consisting of three epic tracks, each topping out in excess of 20 minutes, the album is hypnotically contemplative; the music shifts in subtle -- almost subliminal -- fashion, and the deeper one listens, the more rewarding it becomes.


Dusted: Anybody who’s reveled in the hypno-purr, clang and swoosh that typified the 1972 effort might feel, as I did, that as great as that album was, a certain push over the edge was lacking. All of the necessary components were there – Jean Herve Peron’s rippingly metallic bass, Zappi Deiarmeir’s stoically thunderous drums, Conrad’s shrill and ever-changing “eternal music” violin ruminations, all augmented by keyboard atmospheres courtesy of the late Rudolf Sosna. It all sounds just a shade too perfect now, too contrived, with every element audible without achieving the necessary blend. As a recent album title has it, “It’s magnificent, but it isn’t war.” Conrad’s Early Minimalism project came much closer to how I imagined the 1972 material to sound in Wumme – stark, full, distortion breeding difference tones which breeded three-dimensionality.


HEAR

Faust - Faust

While we're freaking out and getting out there with the jams, I might as well throw one of my top five Krautrock records at you (Faust has a few others in that five).


This is a big/beautiful/brilliant record. More collage that pop... more art, than rock... more feeling than technique. It's everything music should be when you boil it down: Weird, primal, and noting a shared language among a collected few.


Invite this LP over for a slumber party.

_____________________________


Trouserpress: First active in the early '70s, Germany's Faust played a mix of jazz, folk, minimalism, rock, noise, pop and modern classical that refused to be defined. In doing so, its music managed to become allied with a number of ground- breaking styles. Industrial noisemakers trace their roots back to Faust as one of the first groups to approach rock as electronic studio music. Faust's eclectic psychedelia also pigeonholed them as one of the most internationally influential (especially on the noise and industrial generation, starting with Cabaret Voltaire) of the early- '70s German progressive-rock experimenters. Faust's first album appeared the same year as Kraftwerk's, but the group disbanded two years later without ever enjoying much commercial success (or even international exposure) and has thus become fairly obscure, although its work has been kept in print via reissues.

Released as a dramatic picture disc — an X-ray of a hand embedded in clear vinyl and packaged in a transparent sleeve — Faust consists of three long, post- psychedelic jams, each composed of a couple of ideas loosely strung together. The group uses droning fuzz guitar, primitive electronics, silences, piano tinklings, warbled vocals, cabaret accents, tape manipulation and probably at least one kitchen sink. The way Faust throws these elements together suggests dada music for the electronic age.

HEAR