The record
At a glance
- Artist
- Faust
- Recorded
- Prinzenbar, Hamburg, 1990
- Released
- 1994
- Original tracks
- Nine
- Label
- Table of the Elements Fe 26
- Performers
- Jean-Hervé Péron and Werner Diermaier
Why it matters
Faust returns by rebuilding performance from the floor
The Faust Concerts Vol. I captures a return to public performance after roughly fifteen years without presenting the event as a polished resurrection of the 1970s catalogue. Jean-Hervé Péron and Werner Diermaier reduce Faust to a two-person core capable of bass pressure, drums, voice, electronics, acoustic interruption and industrial action. The nine pieces include Rainy Day as an identifiable connection to So Far, but the programme is dominated by new or transformed live material. Chainsaws and power tools are not decorative stage mythology; the releasing label identifies them as part of the recorded concert's range.
Quiet passages matter equally because they make the next mechanical or amplified entrance proportionally larger. Recorded at Hamburg's Prinzenbar in 1990 and issued four years later, the album documents reunion before the studio return Rien reached listeners. Its specific performance credits prevent the broader story of Irmler, Péron and Diermaier's reunion activities from being carelessly turned into the personnel of this disc. The album matters as an act of redefinition: Faust resumes by applying its original openness to the capabilities and limitations of a different live unit.
Hamburg 1990
The first concert after fifteen years
Faust's original continuous phase ended in the mid-1970s after Virgin declined to continue with a planned follow-up to Faust IV. Archival releases maintained the name, but regular group activity remained scarce through the following years. The 1990 Hamburg performance marked the first Faust concert in approximately fifteen years according to Table of the Elements. It took place at the Prinzenbar and centered on Jean-Hervé Péron and Werner Diermaier.
The recording predates the 1992 London Marquee performance later issued as The Faust Concerts Vol. II. Table of the Elements released both volumes in 1994 as separate location-specific documents. The American label also helped bring Faust to the United States and supported the recordings that became Rien. Volume I therefore belongs to the beginning of the reunion era, not to the original Wümme archive and not to a 1994 studio session.
Péron and Diermaier
Péron and Diermaier as a complete live mechanism
Péron's bass can provide riff, drone or physical floor, allowing the duo to sound larger without imitating the five-person Faust IV lineup. His voice supplies language, shout and theatrical presence rather than one stable singer-songwriter role. Diermaier treats drums as one part of a larger percussion environment that includes metal and powered objects. The duo's exposed format makes timing and response easier to hear than on the dense early studio collages.
Electronics can extend a gesture after the players stop, complicating the apparent boundary between instrument and room. Rainy Day retains the collective Faust writing identity, while the other release credits center Péron and Diermaier in varying combinations. Malic and Licher turn the CD into a deliberately crafted object rather than a generic archival jewel case. No additional original member is assigned as performer here without release-specific documentation.
Live extremes
Bass, drums, tools and abrupt acoustic air
The recording moves between amplified density and acoustic exposure without a studio edit smoothing the difference. Bass and drums establish repeated cells that can be prolonged, interrupted or buried beneath mechanical sound. Power tools introduce continuous energy with a different attack profile from musical feedback; their pitch is consequence rather than tuned melody. Voice often behaves as command or event, binding a room's attention before instruments reorganize.
The Sad Head and Rainy Day carry echoes of earlier Faust song language without becoming faithful catalogue reproductions. Short pieces such as 13/8 and Voltaire prevent the longer improvisations from setting one scale for the full concert. Audience and venue presence remain part of the sound even when applause is not the main organizing marker. The album's drama comes from changing methods of making matter vibrate: string, skin, air, electricity and machinery share the stage.
Track guide
Nine Hamburg pieces from ticket to Rien
As-tu ton ticket?
The opening question—do you have your ticket?—places entry and permission at the front of the reunion. Bass, percussion, voice and electronic force establish a performance that will not behave like an orderly retrospective. The nine-minute scale allows the duo to assemble its working environment in public. Repetition gains density, and non-instrumental attacks challenge any assumption that the concert's tools are merely theatrical props.
Legendäre Gleichgültigkeit
Legendary indifference is compact and deliberately contradictory: a charged live event carries a title of detachment. Rhythmic figures and voice produce focus rather than apathy. The piece works as a compressed answer to the opener, showing how quickly the duo can establish and abandon a state. Its German title also returns Faust to local language and place after the French opening question.
The Sad Head
The title recalls but does not simply reproduce The Sad Skinhead. A smaller song-like shape emerges inside the live machinery, with vocal presence and a more legible emotional contour. The altered name matters because this is not billed as a faithful performance of the Faust IV track. Its position gives the album a fragile human center before Haarscharf sharpens the physical surface again.
Haarscharf
The German word suggests hairline precision or a narrow escape. Percussive and electronic attacks make edges audible, and the four-minute duration concentrates response. Rather than using precision to polish the sound, the duo makes exact entrances intensify danger. The track demonstrates that Faust's live disorder can depend on disciplined timing even when sources include noisy tools and unstable feedback.
Schempel Buddha
The concert's central longer piece balances ritual repetition, absurd naming and shifts between amplified mass and more open space. Bass and percussion can suggest procession while voice and electronics refuse devotional solemnity. The title does not establish a documented religious concept. Its function is characteristically Faustian: incompatible cultural signals create a frame in which sound can remain serious without becoming reverent.
13/8
A brief numerical title focuses attention on meter and subdivision, though the listener need not reduce every gesture to a counted exercise. The compact piece acts as a technical pivot between the central improvisation and the return of Rainy Day. Percussive accents expose the duo's coordination. Its small scale prevents the concert from turning every idea into a long industrial crescendo.
Rainy Day
The programme's clearest link to the early catalogue re-enters with the flexibility of a two-person live performance. The basic repeated identity associated with It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl remains a point of recognition, but duration, instrumentation and room response belong to 1990. The track avoids museum accuracy: memory supplies a framework that bass, drums and voice can stretch in the present.
Voltaire
A short named portrait follows the longest recognizable catalogue connection. The music does not offer a biographical summary of the philosopher. Instead, voice and sharp ensemble gestures make the name a provocation around language, reason and disruption. At less than four minutes, the piece clears the stage for the final Rien while preserving the concert's habit of turning titles into unstable conceptual triggers.
Rien
Nothing closes the album as a four-minute live construction, not an absence of sound. Bass, percussion, electronics and room activity give the title a practical paradox. This 1990 Rien predates the reunion studio album of the same name and should not be mistaken automatically for its later title track master. The ending makes renewal provisional: Faust returns, produces something from nothing and refuses a grand historical curtain call.
Reunion
Return without retrospective comfort
The concert's titles circle admission, indifference, sadness, precision, ritual, number, weather, philosophy and nothing. They do not form a narrative, but they repeatedly test what a reunion is allowed to mean. Ticket makes access explicit while the music refuses to reward entry with familiar hits. Legendary indifference mocks the expectation that historical importance should produce solemn self-consciousness.
The Sad Head and Rainy Day allow memory to surface in altered form. 13/8 names technical order inside a performance publicly associated with chaos. Voltaire places intellectual history beside industrial action without providing a lecture. Rien ends on an absence-word that becomes full of physical activity, an apt statement for a group returning after apparent disappearance.
Fe 26
Iron, laser etching and a limited artist object
Table of the Elements assigned the release the element identity Iron and catalogue number Fe 26. The compact disc used laser etching, die-cut material and custom letterpress enclosures. Jon Malic directed the design and Bruce Licher handled printing. A special artist edition was numbered, emphasizing the release as a crafted object rather than a mass-market live souvenir.
Iron suits the recorded use of chainsaws, power tools and struck material without reducing the music to industrial spectacle. The restrained edition design contrasts with the bodily disorder described in the performance. Volume II used a separate element identity and documents London in 1992. Packaging therefore reinforces the need to keep the two concert volumes, venues and years distinct.
1994
A 1990 event reaches record in 1994
Table of the Elements issued The Faust Concerts Vol. I in 1994, four years after the Hamburg performance. The label presented it as Faust's first concert in fifteen years. Its nine tracks documented a reunion before new studio work had fully re-established the group in the record market. The release emphasized extremes from overblown electronics and acoustic passages to chainsaws and power tools.
A limited artist edition and elaborate packaging positioned the disc within Table of the Elements' experimental catalogue. No chart or sales result is asserted because reliable documentation does not establish one. Volume II appeared alongside it but captured the Marquee Club in London in 1992. The two records helped establish the reunion as an active performance practice and prepared the context for Rien.
Second beginning
The live hinge between disappearance and Rien
Volume I is a key document of Faust's second beginning rather than a comprehensive live anthology. It shows that Péron and Diermaier could reactivate the name through method—risk, material sound and unstable form—rather than personnel completeness. The album's industrial objects connect to early Faust's interest in nonstandard sound sources while reflecting a changed performance scale. Rainy Day provides continuity, but the programme's new titles prevent nostalgia from controlling the set.
Later reunion lineups would expand and divide, making release-specific personnel especially important across the 1990s catalogue. Rien transformed subsequent performances and recordings into a studio collage with additional collaborators. The concert disc remains rawer and more location-specific, preserving the Prinzenbar event as its own work. Its legacy lies in demonstrating that historical experimental groups can return by accepting changed bodies and circumstances rather than simulating their youth.
Volume I
Keep Hamburg separate from the London Volume II
The album contains nine live tracks. Release credits identify Péron and Diermaier as performers. The source concert took place in Hamburg in 1990, not during 1994. Rainy Day is the programme's direct early-catalogue connection.
The Sad Head should not be silently retitled The Sad Skinhead. Voice is present, so an Instrumental classification is incorrect. Volume II belongs to London 1992 and must remain separate. Rien here is a live 1990 track, not automatically the later studio-album master.
A listening path
Follow the room, not a greatest-hits set
- Use the opening ticket question as the threshold into the performance.
- Follow how short tracks reset scale after longer constructions.
- Listen for song shape emerging in The Sad Head.
- Treat tools and electronics as sound sources, not visual novelty.
- Compare Rainy Day's live repetition with the 1972 studio recording.
- Hear Voltaire as a compact provocation before the finale.
- End with Rien and preserve its difference from the later album.
Research trail
Sources and further reading
- Faust Concerts Vol. I official release history and Hamburg context — Table of the Elements
- Faust Concerts Vol. I release-group record — MusicBrainz
- Faust reunion biography — AllMusic
- Faust band history — Faust
- Werner Diermaier interview and reunion chronology — Perfect Sound Forever