Gudrun Gut and Joachim Irmler:
500m:
Bureau B:
CD/LP/DD:
Out now:
★★★★★★★☆☆☆
Recorded some 500 metres above sea level at Faust's Scheer studio in 2013 (hence the album's title), the music on Gut and Irmler's collaborative audio-travelogue is almost as uncompromising as the owner's of said recording out-post. Indeed, with one-half of the band already a Faust founder and contributor since the early '70s, it isn't difficult to hear where some of the source ideas came from for this album.
Gut's background is a little more earthy and less 'proggy' - she founded Malaria!, an erstwhile all-female new-wave outfit originally signed to Les Disques Du Crepuscule, formed from the ashes of the not-dissimilar Mania D and the creators of the darkly gothic album Emotion and the aggro-disco classic Weisses Wasser (White Water).
Her contribution here is too settle things down with husky vocals, 'structured Berliner discipline' and cohesion, to glue her heritage to Irmler's without it turning into a battle, nor another Faust member's solo indulgence - this is very much two people crafting experimentalism and accessibility in equal measures. A sonic-electro marriage made in heaven.
Using a template comprised of looped beats, resonating basslines, random vocals and whispers, drones and melodic subtlety, Gut and Irmler steer 500M through untroubled waters for the most part. Pieces like Parfum, Auf und Ab and Traum rely on drum-programs to drive their ideas forward, the first two almost bordering on being suitable choices for dancing in some dingy Hamburg basement bar with a gun in one hand, a bottle of hard liqour in the other and eyes firmly shut, while Fruh and Noah are perhaps a little more explorative, more fragmented than the rest on offer and blessed with less menace. Parfum primarily recalls Malaria's more approachable moments, Fruh Faust's, yet it's all harmonious and interpolated perfectly.
500M treads interesting new ground throughout its nine excursions and only requires the merest figment of your imagination to enjoy it. And an ear for heights.
500m:
Bureau B:
CD/LP/DD:
Out now:
★★★★★★★☆☆☆
Gut's background is a little more earthy and less 'proggy' - she founded Malaria!, an erstwhile all-female new-wave outfit originally signed to Les Disques Du Crepuscule, formed from the ashes of the not-dissimilar Mania D and the creators of the darkly gothic album Emotion and the aggro-disco classic Weisses Wasser (White Water).
Her contribution here is too settle things down with husky vocals, 'structured Berliner discipline' and cohesion, to glue her heritage to Irmler's without it turning into a battle, nor another Faust member's solo indulgence - this is very much two people crafting experimentalism and accessibility in equal measures. A sonic-electro marriage made in heaven.
Using a template comprised of looped beats, resonating basslines, random vocals and whispers, drones and melodic subtlety, Gut and Irmler steer 500M through untroubled waters for the most part. Pieces like Parfum, Auf und Ab and Traum rely on drum-programs to drive their ideas forward, the first two almost bordering on being suitable choices for dancing in some dingy Hamburg basement bar with a gun in one hand, a bottle of hard liqour in the other and eyes firmly shut, while Fruh and Noah are perhaps a little more explorative, more fragmented than the rest on offer and blessed with less menace. Parfum primarily recalls Malaria's more approachable moments, Fruh Faust's, yet it's all harmonious and interpolated perfectly.
500M treads interesting new ground throughout its nine excursions and only requires the merest figment of your imagination to enjoy it. And an ear for heights.