Faust - Something Dirty (2011)

Faust have been around for over 40 years. Since 2007, the line-up of the Krautrock legends has comprised founder members Jean-Hervé Peron and Zappi Diermaier, the English musician James Johnston, founder of the brutish blues rockers Gallon Drunk and long-standing member of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, plus the English painter, filmmaker, author and musician Geraldine Swayne. On "Something Dirty" the creativity and musical ideas of these four personalities coalesce into a perfect symbiosis of sound. It is at once hypnotic, repetitive, melodic, exhilarating, psychedelic, menacing, dadaist, ethereal. Johnston's guitar saws its way through Diermaier's archaic beats, harmonically enriched by Peron's powerful bass and Swayne's psychedelic keyboards. Time and again, Faust revisit their avant-garde roots, experimenting with voices and unusual instruments. (A flamethrower and goat hooves can be detected in their arsenal of sonic sources.) Best of all, however, Faust have succeeded in reproducing the raw energy and roughness of their live performances on "something dirty".