Almost 40 years after the fact, Faust remains a standard-bearer of Krautrock, the German experimental rock movement of the early 1970s.

Just don’t call Faust a Krautrock band.

For one thing, says Jean-Herve Péron, one of the group’s two remaining original members, Faust doesn’t have many fans in Germany, even though it’s still based there. For another, none of the musicians on the current tour, which stops at the Black Cat Sunday for the final night of the Sonic Circuits Festival, happens to be German. Péron is French, original drummer Zappi Diermaier is Austrian, James Johnston is British, and Geraldine Swayne is Irish.

And there’s also the matter that after four decades as a rock ‘n’ roll trope, the word “Krautrock” is basically meaningless. “In the beginning I liked it,” Péron says. ”It was first a joke, then it was a quite respected way of making music. But in the past decade, everything that comes from Germany is called Krautrock, even if it sounds like Anglo-American rock. That’s the opposite of what we meant it to be. But I don’t mind, really. The audience will decide if it’s good.”

But when Faust—and bands like Can, Kraftwerk, Neu!, and Cluster—began making music around the late 1960s, they weren’t trying to concoct an explicitly Teutonic tonic to ascendant U.S. and U.K. rock music. Simply, their goal was to make experimental sounds outside the accepted boundaries of any popular genre—an aesthetic far more otherworldly than German.

Part of that aim had to do with social unrest on the continent. “There was a big upheaval in Europe poltically and socially, so it had repercussions in the arts,” Péron says. ”And there was a surge of a new identity, new values, and so we wanted very much to find something of our own, far from the normal American thing.” Faust’s early recordings—which hit an apex on the sprawing The Faust Tapes in 1973—are often chaotic and sometimes ambient, generally unbeholden to structure but occasionally playful, and utterly uncompromising.

To Péron, though, experimental music was actually an escape from the political zeitgeist. The multi-instrumentalist and singer left France in 1967 for the United States as an exchange student. There, he absorbed the music of Henry Mancini and Bob Dylan (”I’m not sure if I liked either,” he says). When he returned to France in July 1968, two months after a nationwide general strike, he found the political situation confusing, he says. He ended up following a girlfriend to Hamburg.

With Faust, which formed in 1971, Péron and his bandmates quickly earned a cult following, and soon after a great deal of media attention in the U.K. By 1975, however, the group was label-less. “We were more or less thrown out of Polydor, just as later we were thrown out of Virgin, because we didn’t want to make compromises,” Péron says. ”We didn’t want to make mainstream or popular music. That’s how you feel when you’re 20 and full of revolutionary ideals. You don’t mind being thrown out of a record company.”

After that, around 1975, Faust “went incognito,” Péron says. ”We were a bit fed up so we went underground. We kept on doing concerts for a couple years but without really shouting on top of the roofs.” Then the group stopped making music.

Faust reformed in the early 1990s, and in various lineups, and with increasing frequency, the group has toured, recorded, and collaborated with other experimental acts since. Péron even says he considers the group’s 1997 album, You Know FaUSt, to be as good as anything he recorded in the 1970s. Increasingly, Faust is a mainstay of international experimental music festivals, and Péron even runs his own, the Avantgarde Festival in Schiphorst, Germany. He says he’s generally impressed with the experimental music being played today, even if he’s taken slightly aback at the credit Faust sometimes receives as an influence.

“When you’re in the middle of a storm you don’t realize what the storm is doing all around you,” he says. “But for me it is very flattering.”

Faust performs Sunday night at the Black Cat with Rat Basterd, Chris Greir, and Ulrich Krieger; HEALTH; Pekka Airaksinen; and Alexei Borisov and Anton Nikkilä. Doors open at 8 p.m.; tickets are $15. Photo courtesy of Faust’s MySpace page.

Jandek–who performs Saturday at Velvet Lounge as part of the Sonic Circuits Festival–has been making inscrutable, some would even say bad, art for over two decades. Still, I’ve never considered him capable of advancement. His behavior–hiding his true identity, declining interviews, never appearing in public, releasing scores droney and unlistenable psych-folk records via mail order–is weird, yeah, but it’s consistent. And truly advanced behavior, at least as it is defined by founder Jason Hartley, is anything but consistent.

As Chuck Klosterman put it in this Esquire article:

The key to Advancement is that Advanced artists a) do not do what is expected of them but also b) do not do the opposite of what is expected of them.

Jandek–unlike Sting, Lou Reed, or any other truly advanced artist–pretty much always does what you expect.

Or does he?

As of late, Jandek has been showing behavior suggestive of advancement. In 2004 he performed live for the first time ever, at a festival in Glasgow, Scotland. This was actually kind of overt, meaning that it’s the exact opposite of his expected behavior and thus not advanced. Yet overt behavior is, confusingly, a precursor to advancement.

In 2005 he released Raining Down Diamonds, an album of songs performed solo on fretless electric bass. Fretless bass is an extremely advanced instrument.

And now this:

I would say this is a pretty solid example of not doing what is expected, yet not doing the opposite of what is expected.
As Washington City Paper editor Andrew Beaujon observed: “How reclusive can you be if you know someone who plays slap bass?”

I’m a still a little skeptical, but a case is definitely building.

Jandek
Sat., 9/26 @ Velvet Lounge
$20 (includes an entire day’s worth of experimental music performances by local and international artists)
915 U St. NW
Washington DC

Full text after the jump:

“As Mayor of the District of Columbia I am pleased to welcome the Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music to our nation’s capitol.

Adrian M. Fenty
Mayor, District of Columbia“

Full schedule after the jump

Sonic Circuits @ Artomatic
55 M St. SE, Washington DC
Cabaret Stage, 2nd Floor

Performer Time
Robert Blake Highway 4pm
Kingdom of Sharks 430pm
Sean Peoples 5pm
Layne Garrett 530pm
Dave Vosh+Logan Mitchell Sr. 6pm
Nine Strings 630pm
Fast Forty 7pm
RDK 730pm
Soft Pieces 8pm
BLK w/ BEAR+VJ Poppins 830pm
Pilesar 9pm
The Angus Brainpan 930pm
Tone Ghosting 10pm
Twenty-first Century Chamber Ensemble 1030pm
Second Land 11pm
Kuschty Rye Ergot 1130pm
Slug Bait 12am
Aerosolized Mucus 12:30am

But yeah, I had to pinch myself just to be certain that I was awake and that the event wasn’t really taking place in Baltimore.

The festival will be taking place September 25-27, 2009.

List after the jump.

2009 FESTIVAL ARTISTS:
Faust
Jandek
Andrew W.K.+Chris Grier+Ulrich Krieger
Health
Elliot Sharp
Annea Lockwood & Tom Buckner
Marvin Aryes
BLK w/BEAR
Nine Strings + Pilesar
21st Century Ensemble
This Bag is not a Toy
Even Parker & Ned Rothenberg
David Daniell
Bicameral Mind
Janel & Anthony
Pekka Airaksinen
TL741
Luigi Archetti
qfwfqduo
ayyoko confidential
ige*timer
Jeff Carey
Tim Hecker
Gunter Hampel
Fckn Bstrds
Soft Pieces
Olivia Block+Tomas Korber
Pilesar
Ergo
Never Work
Kotra
Kohoutek
Alexei Borisov & Anton Nikilla
Blue Sausage Infant
Dead Violets
Dr. Bibber
Second Land
Sean Peoples

Pyramid Atlantic Arts Center has had a busy week. With three shows curated by the Sonic Circuits crew in four days, the cozy Silver Spring gallery has given experimental music fans in the District plenty of opportunities to get their fill. Thursday’s performances by Fast Forty, Area C, and Mem1 provided a pleasant bookend to the week, exemplifying how the ongoing Sonic Circuits series continues to highlight the breadth and diversity that the “experimental” umbrella encompasses.

Sunday’s showcase kicked things off for the week, nipping at the heels of the free Flaming Lips show on the National Mall. Luckily, the Lips finished with just enough time for me to truck up to Silver Spring. My reward: sets by locals Corpus Callosum and Pilesar, alongside Philadelphia noise chanteuse U.S. Girls, and sample-happy Tzadik improv trio Brown Wing Overdrive. Compare that to the performance on Wednesday evening: Seminal NC folk weirdo Eugene Chadbourne delivered an intimate set of zany country tunes on an odd array of homemade instruments, including a five-string banjo and an electrified rake.

Thursday night’s bill was especially exciting for me, given how endeared I’ve been to Providence’s Erik Carlson and his Area C project over the last few years. His performance was equally as blissful and meditative as his recordings, so it was satisfying to see his music develop in real time. Encircled by a variety of effects pedals, samplers, and mystery machines, Carlson deftly navigated his guitar tones through glistening layers — a piecemeal composition of crescendo and restraint. More often than not, artists practicing a similar approach to Carlson’s craft can send audiences straight to a snooze, but Area C has always proved remarkably engaging despite its gentility. His new CD, Charmed Birds vs. Sorcery, is out now on Students of Decay.

“Intense ambient” might sound like an oxymoron, but it does seem fitting for D.C.-based Keith Sinzinger’s Fast Forty. Armed with a hanging rack of galvanized pipe, Sinzinger processed their reverberations through a circuit of delay pedals as he struck them with a rotating cast of mallets. A small ensemble of circuit-bent toys and triggered samples inserted an eerie playfulness to the mix: A woman’s instructional countdown of “1, 2, 3″ was immediately answered by a triplet of corresponding clangs.

L.A. duo MEM1 headlined the showcase — an exercise in coaxing a diverse sound palette from limited source material. The subject in this case was Laura Cetilia’s cello, which was painstakingly manipulated by husband Mark Cetilia and his mix of laptop effects. Laura’s minimal introduction was soon joined by a mutating chorus of electronic interpretations taken from her own instrument. From a crackling, static-laden background, to groaning mechanical pulse, Mark mixed Laura’s plucks and scrapes — some more appealing than others — though the depth of their sound was certainly applause-worthy.

As Brandon Wu wrote yesterday, the Sonic Circuits crew will take part in the marathon of out-sounds that is the Avant Fairfax Festival this evening, with music starting at 6pm. And be sure to mark your calendar for the next SC-curated event at Pyramid Atlantic, scheduled for May 3rd. Check the Sonic Circuits site for more info.

*Photo courtesy of Cristina Bejarano

This comes right on the heels of an excellent feature story in the nationally distributed improvised music magazine Signal to Noise, which explored the same DC experimental music scene. (That article is actually mentioned in the NPR story linked to above.)

This past year was busy. I can’t think of much by way of disappointments, but the following stood out and really made 2008 for me:

• Dmerit is a DJ/production duo who are killing it right now. I just caught a DJ set of theirs and it included a bunch of their own remixes. I expect even more from these guys in 2009.
• All Our Noise blog – Some friends of mine started this blog, which highlights Washington, D.C.’s cultural rebirth. AON Sessions films local artists performing live and provides a good alternative (not to mention local flavor) to YouTube’s video distractions.
• Sonic Circuits – Jeff Surak’s Sonic Circuits festival is becoming the pride of a small community of folks who celebrate experimental music here in the District. Jeff’s tireless efforts over the past several years seems to be paying off and this last year’s festival was packed with great performances.
• I started DJing a funk, soul and R&B night we call Fatback with some friends this year. We’ve changed venues a couple of times, but found a home at Red Lounge on 14th Street NW. The audience is always ready to dance at 10 p.m. and it keeps going until they push us out at 2 a.m.
• Future Times – Andrew Field-Pickering’s new boutique 7″ label is already one of my favorites. He has great taste and who doesn’t love a 7″ these days? Compact discs are so 2002.
• The Lighthouse – House shows are always more interesting than club shows. There is possibility in the air. And there is usually a potluck/cheaper beer. The Lighthouse had some amazing shows this past year and I bet they continue providing an alternative venue for bands passing through D.C.

What were your bestselling discs?

The bestselling disc was definitely Little Women’s Teeth. Little Women is this great freak-out-jazz quartet from NYC who combine blistering horns, shredding guitars, and pummeling drums. Imagine constant streams of spiraling horns meeting a punk rhythm section. The live show is intense. They share members of ZS and Extra Life, which also claim bestselling status on the label. The albums included Extra Life’s “2 Song EP” and the ZS “4 Systems”. All three of these bands are from the NYC area and have pushed the limits of experimental music in my mind.

Favorite discs?

A lot of my favorite local bands are still working on their full albums, but some of the records that really stood out this year included the following:

• Belly by Food For Animals – This is hip-hop from the future that has come to save us all from the present.
• Methods EP by Imperial China – I have waited a long time to hear a record like this. For it to come out of DC makes it worth the wait. It harkens back to some great post-punk sounds of DC past, but it doesn’t feel overly nostalgic.
• Ghost Games by Apes – Ghost Games sounds like it came from a swamp. Apes are one of the most consistently awesome live shows in DC right now.

As for music in general, it would be a long list. But here are a few that you might not have heard:

• Los Angeles and the corresponding EP’s by Flying Lotus really impressed me. It was a swirling, cosmic down-tempo affair from this kid in California.
• Fallin’ Off The Reel, Vol. 2 released by the Truth & Soul label. This is soul music that you’ve never heard before, but somehow it tastes familiar. Every track is spot on.
• Sand by Philip Jeck – For me, Jeck manipulates sounds in such interesting and engaging ways. Instead of just using laptops, he approaches sound sources with older tools, always producing something beautiful and new.

—Sean Peoples

Dead Violets is a collaboration between zeromoon head-honcho and Sonic Circuits curator Jeff Surak, Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words‘ Thomas Ekelund, and local vocalist (and newest member) Bethany Moore, birthing a black hole of lyrical mysticism and growling electronics. Their new 3-inch, YZMRHS, was released in early November—now available via the zeromoon Web site. Sunday’s performance revolved around Surak’s dense, digital choruses crawling under Moore’s incantations. The two worked together well, with Moore’s lines often getting played back into the mix and toppling over themselves while the surrounding static built to a climax. Check the video below for a snippet of the performance:

The highlight of the evening, however, came with Video Love’s intoxicating amalgamation of French synth-pop and live video samples, which mixed and solidified masterfully. Local filmmaker James June Schneider worked the video loops and sound samples — projected on two of the surrounding walls — while his wife, Elise Pierre, sang atop buoyant keyboard beats. The interplay between the two was remarkable; it took me two songs into the performance before I realized that half of the sound samples were being taken from the projected footage, looped beneath Pierre’s staccato French. Images of twitching cobwebs faded into cuts of a young girl pouncing on the camera with a giant net; a clip of a man’s head frantically submerged beneath the sea gave way to a barrage of water-filled glasses similar liquid-based samples. Such deft integration of video, electronics, and pop sentiments was a textbook example of how multimedia experimentation can be successfully wrangled and exploited.

Schenider’s newest film, 1,2,3 Whiteout (The End of the Light Age), was also released via zeromoon in early November, and features a collage of original footage, found clips, and a tailor-made soundtrack emphasisng an exitential tug-of-war between light, dark, and sound. You can find more info on the zeromoon Web site, or view the trailer below:

According to Surak, Sonic Circuits will continue to host a variety of interesting spectacles at Pyramid Atlantic, as well as other venues around the District. Last Sunday featured peformances by Dan Conrad (Baltimore), Janel+Anthony+Violet (DC), and Myo (Annapolis).

If there was ever any doubt that D.C.’s experimental underground was alive and kicking, it’s been erased this week. Not only are we in the middle of the eighth annual Sonic Circuits Festival (ongoing through Sunday at the Velvet Lounge and the National Museum of Women in the Arts), but area artists also just unveiled District of Noise, a brand-new compilation of local music deviants released in conjunction with the week-long event. Sunday served as both the festival’s opening night and the record’s release party, hosting performances by many of the acts featured on the compilation’s 17 tracks. The show itself was a revolving door of musicians and on-the-spot collaborations, championing the vibrancy of the DMV experimental scene while exhibiting its incestuous network.

Compiled by festival curator and Zeromoon label-head Jeff Surak, District of Noise reveals a clique of artists steeped in audiophile philosophies and improvisation, emphasizing sheer sound and ambiance rather than traditional song structure or accessibility. It’s the first compilation birthed from the Sonic Circuits run, assembled from some of the area’s more active artists, though not completely all-encompassing of the numerous projects around. According to Surak, District of Noise “acts as a vehicle to promote local artists, in hopes that people will support them the rest of the year when they play out.”

The record eases in with BLK w/BEAR’s deft loop deconstruction, piling processed cello and bass atop prepared vinyl records. Such incorporation of rhythm or familiarity—however faint or obtuse—outlines the most successful approach to making difficult music more palatable for the average listener, serving as a launchpad for the surrounding overload. Both Blue Sausage Infant and Cash Slave Clique (MP3 below) invoke the technique as well; BSI drowns heavy metal riffage with synthesizer oscillations while CSC pummels a drum machine beat with seizure-inducing electronics. An enticing introduction, indeed.

Echolalia’s “Falling Out” ushers in the industrial cloud that hangs throughout the middle third of the record, mixing menacing drones with minimal flourishes. Individually, the tracks maintain their own subtle flair, but on the surface, the frigid, electronic haze and mechanistic growls melt together without much protest. Seamless or samey, it’s your call. But a close listen will reveal rewarding compositions, most notably Mind Over Matter Music Over Mind’s eerie gurgles, Janel & Anthony’s cello/guitar manipulations (mp3 below), and Northern Machine’s obliterated organ.

Tone Ghosting injects a ripple into the album’s flow with “Amaxana:Visitation,” a frenzy of clipped vocals relentlessly mutated atop flickers of drum machine and static. The meticulous sonic fetishism that the compilation emphasizes is perhaps most beautifully represented by Cory O’Brien and his Myo moniker: His contribution builds through hushed crackle that colors the background hum, escalating in pitch as the track progresses. Surak’s own electroacoustic outlet Violet concludes the record with a disorienting piece of digital skitter; a shortwave malfunction glowering in the doldrums.

District of Noise provides a welcome snapshot of Washington’s most bizarre, marrying the work of industrial/experimental pioneers like Maurizio Bianchi and Stockhausen with the new-school noise antics of NYC stable No Fun Productions. It may not have quite the subterranean notoriety of the latter’s annual No Fun Fest, but Sonic Circuits still provides an impressive array of art and innovation, putting a uniquely D.C. spin on the concept of experimental music.

Four full nights of music remain in the Festival, with several artists featured on the compilation still scheduled to play, including Mind Over Matter Music Over Mind, Myo, Janel & Anthony, Northern Machine, and RDK. You can find a full schedule up at the Sonic Circuits site.

DOWNLOAD:

Cash Slave Clique, “Sonicervex”

Janel & Anthony, “Improvisation 61″