Steven Wray Lobdell - solo show of the legendary FAUST guitarrist April 25, 2006

Soloshow des legendären FAUST-Gitarristen:

STEVEN WRAY LOBDELL
(Holymountain Records, Portland)

DJ MARKUS DETMER
(staubgold, Berlin)

einige links: www.holymountain.com/lobdell.htm
http://www.staubgold.com/

Mi. 26.04. ZENTRALE RANDLAGE, Schönhauser Allee 172, 10435 Berlin

Steven Wray Lobdell, der Gitarrist der legendären Krautrock-Band FAUST
spielt am 26.04.06 in der Zentralen Randlage, Berlin's schönstem Club
für ungewöhnliche Musik. Faust, die mit Bands wie CAN und NEU seit
Anfang der 70er Jahre zur Speerspitze des Deutschen Avantgarde-Rock
gehören, sind gerade auf Abschiedstour durch Europa und haben seit mehr
als 3 Jahren nicht mehr in Berlin gespielt.

Seit 1994 ist Steven Wray Lobdell der offizielle Gitarrist von FAUST,
ist aber auch in anderen Formationen wie Sufi Mind Game und Davis
Redford Triad tätig. Nach seinem ersten Solo-Album "Automatic Writing
by the Moon" (1999), wurde das zweite "Live at Club Donut" (2004) in
einem kleinen Donut-Laden in seiner Heimatstadt Portland, Oregon
aufgenommen. Diese Live-Vinyl-Platte wurde auf 300 Exemplare limitiert.

Gespannt sein können wir auf ein ungewöhnliches Noise-Konzert, das sich
durch Explosionen, Unterbrechungen und gekonnte Gitarrengriffe zum
totalen Chaos entwickelt.

Markus Detmer, auf dessen Label "Staubgold" die letzte FAUST-Platte
"Patchwork" veröffentlicht wurde, wird den Abend als DJ umrahmen.
Staubgold gilt als eines der wichtigsten Labels für experimentelle
Musik in Europa.

____________________________________________________
The aural fetishism of an American Krautrocker
- Steve Lobdell

By TODD MCKENZIE

Once upon a time in Cold War Germany there lived a band called Faust.
Tired of and largely insulated from the growing world of rock cliches
from the ?60s, Faust and a ragtag assortment of mostly unrelated bands,
grouped under the regrettable misnomer ?krautrock,? revolutionized the
music of the 1970s with their nativist compositions of repetitive
rhythms, progressive psychedelia and in-your-face art-school
performances that have been lifted by modern bands ranging from Primal
Scream to Wilco. Drugs and philosophy can be implicated to varying
degrees.

Steve Lobdell, brainman of the Davis Redford Triad: ?No, really, it was
the hemorrhoids, not the drugs.?

?It?s completely unprecedented for a completely unknown German band
with little to no experience to be given a million marks and a
recording studio and sent out with a free hand to make this very
over-the-top music,? says Steve Lobdell. Lobdell was asked to join
Faust back in 1994.

The music of Faust lay somewhere between the sonic freakouts of Can and
the instinctive emotiveness of Neu!, but its work was touched with a
certain macabre humor ? look to tracks such as ?The Sad Skinhead,? off
its most accessible album, ?Faust IV.?

Lobdell, however, was less interested in the music as such, is in the
way the band made the music. ?I was always interested in the recordings
themselves, in the actual sound,? he says, such as ?the directly
recorded guitars, the over-the-top sounds and the sparse moments of
silence.?

Lobdell?s aural fetishism is evident on the guitar-centric work of the
Davis Redford Triad?s organic compositions: Desert-fried riffs build
over echoplex loops into the focused, chaotic noise of distortion
distorting itself before mellowing out to the sounds of loose folk and
ambient cymbals. The rhythm section, composed of Matthew Freid on bass,
Jeffrey Helwig on drums and Jef Brown (formerly of Jackie-O) on guitars
and sax, add to these meditations on noise.

Lobdell?s first recording with Faust was 1994?s ?Rien,? on which he
played alongside such luminaries as Keiji Haino (head-crushingly heavy
guitar legend of Fushitsusha) and Jim O?Rourke (über-prolific
experimental musician/producer and now Sonic Youth groupie). He left
after 1997?s ?Faust Wakes Nosferatu? when, in Germany during Ramadan,
he went temporarily insane.

Although he attributes the causes of this episode to some digestive
problems associated with German food and a bad case of hemorrhoids, the
effect on his life was profound. ?I had clairvoyant experiences. Some
crazy shit happened to me,? he laughs, which he can now do after years
of distance. ?In a way it puts you more in tune with metaphysical
realities. It was a ?Valis? experience,? ?Valis? being Philip K. Dick?s
autobiographical novel of revelation, delusion, paranoia and
transcendence.

A marked interest in metaphysics, as well as quasi-mysticism and
numerology, can be found in a cursory glance at some song titles, or
even the title of Davis Redford Triad?s 2002 Holy Mountain release
?Mystical Path of the Number 86.? Lobdell graduated with a religious
studies degree from Lewis and Clark College, and spent six to seven
months in Indonesia studying mysticism, where the influence of Carnatic
music rubbed off to a great deal on the Triad. Carnatic music is based
on monophonic melodies that change with improvisations off of the 72
basic scales of the octave. It also happens to be one of the world?s
oldest musical traditions, and it is the source for Davis Redford
Triad?s spiritualist grooves and electrifying esoterica that echoes the
Amanita-inspired ragas of Bardo Pond.

Lobdell, when he?s not sharing his over-excited post-Beat philosophies
on everything from the topography in Texas to the cocaine in Cleveland,
has some very pronounced views on improvisation and on noise. ?It was a
cool thing about five years ago to use improvisation in experimental
music, but it had given too much license for some people to just make
noise. I love AMM, but I?ve seen Keith Rowe backstage practicing his
scales. You won?t see him doing that onstage, but that guy can play
guitar.? To sum up, it takes genuine talent to do real improvisation,
which probably explains why in his free time, Lobdell and Brown play in
a Rolling Stones cover band.

The sources for of Davis Redford Triad?s studio experiments of
automatic writing don?t all come from the beyond, many come from its
immediate environment.