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REVIEWS
My
Ears, My Ears!
A collaboration between Jean-Hervè
Peron of Faust and Andrew Liles of
Nurse With Wound.
Andrew Liles seems to be flavour of
the month at the moment. Popping up
here there and everywhere. From remixing
classic Current 93 albums, to performing
with Nurse With Wound to this most
unlikely of collaborations. If you’d
have asked me who I thought Andrew
Liles was likely to be working with
next, Jean-Hervè Peron would
never have been someone I would have
thought of. I always associate Andrew
Liles with a very electronic/ experimental
sound much more built up from samples
and keyboards and then processed rather
than the more traditional sounds of
guitars, drums and vocals that we
get here. That said this does work
pretty well and they have created
a very entertaining album.
The album starts with its longest
piece “The Drummer is on Valium.”
I love this track. Basically consisting
of JHP saying “The Drummer is
on Valium,” backed by a tribal
sounding drum pattern sounding not
too dissimilar to Faust or maybe Nurse
With Wound’s “Swamp Rat.”
After a couple of minutes a guitar
comes in with a sound very much like
that from Faust’s “Baby”
from 71 Minutes of Faust. The eight
minutes this runs for fly by and I’d
be more than happy to have an extended
version to listen to.
Next up is “I Do Not Like To
Get Wet,” a cheerful little
piece played on what sounds like a
couple of different brass instruments
with the odd other sound thrown in
for good measure. No vocals on this
one and it has a sort of oompah pah
feel to it.
“Shut Up and Sit Down,”
follows, a pleasant acoustic guitar
track as the back ground with some
little “additional “ sounds
that have Andrew Liles written all
over them. Vocally we get JHP basically
saying the title in French with slight
variations here and there. All reminds
me of Daevid Allens early 70’s
solo albums. It’s piece that
wouldn’t be out of place on
Faust IV.
“Cuculiformes” is a short
gentle guitar piece that follows on
nicely from “Shut Up…”
it’s a nice interlude before
the heavier sounding “We Are
Ready Here,” starts. This begins
with a deep resonant synth line that
suddenly is blasted away by a powerful
synth solo line and trebly distorted
guitar. All very manic and underpinned
by the original synth line that’s
hiding nicely in the background waiting
until it get s a bit of quiet to get
itself noticed again. This is very
much a Faust track to me. Andrew Liles
isn’t particularly noticeable
or at least is contributing in a style
I wouldn’t expect of him.
“Sans Paroles,” is another
one of those gentle guitar tracks
that wouldn’t be out of place
on Faust IV.
Then we have “The Fly on the
Windowsill is Dead.” There’s
definitely a big Nurse With Wound
influence going on here, or at least
a Steven Stapleton one. This reminds
me very much of Current 93’s
In Menstrual Night album. An eerie
sounding track with lots of creaking,
groaning and low pitched hums only
given slight respite in the middle
with a montage of vocals by JHP and
some brief speech samples. I would
have to suggest this track is too
short and it would really benefit
from being given longer to develop
more and to be allowed to really suck
you in. It’s a good piece but
I could definitely have done with
more of it.
“Shake Your Hooves,” is
another piece that is more Faust than
anything else. It’s a huge groove
of bass, drums and guitar sounding
like it could have been the noisier
more extrovert brother of Faust’s
”Listen To the Fish”,
or “Hurricane.”
“Nosferatu” is another
pleasant guitar interlude with some
whistling and singing from JHP to
accompany it. A calming track to take
you down from the intensity of the
previous two.
Next is “I Lost Faith In Words.”
It’s a jazzier affair. The sort
of backing you might get to a Kerouac
spoken word album. Instead of Kerouac
we have JHP narrating in both English
and French. Not a bad track but probably
my least favourite on the album.
Then we’re back to the NWW humour
“Congo Bongo La La La.”
Starts with some ambient drones backed
with some gentle bongos only to suddenly
turn itself on its head with a burst
of humourous vocals very much in an
early Nurse With Wound style.
Another guitar interlude arrives as
“?” the shortest piece
on the album but perhaps just there
as a break before “It’s
Too Loud.” One of the strongest
pieces of the album this starts with
what sounds like some string synth
sounds and the occasional guitar note
and JHP discussing the sound levels
with Andrew Liles. It’s mutates
into JHP speaking German and then
slowly builds. The intensity of the
sounds increases with a guitar riff
some snare drum and JHPs vocals and
becomes a lovely piece of prime Krautrock.
The whole album finishes, appropriately
enough, with “Fini.” A
short one minute track with a small
thud and some crackles as a background
to JHP talking and then it all ends
with the word “fini” repeated
a few times.
I was really unsure of what to expect
from such an unlikely collaboration
but I found it to be a really enjoyable
album and one that I’ve returned
to plenty of times in the last week
and can see myself continuing to do
so for some time to come.
Brainwahsed
Faust's Jean-Herve Peron joins Andrew
Liles for an album full of childlike
joy. From the electric colours of
the sleeve to the electric performances
on the disc, this is a wonderful way
to spend three quarters of an hour.
Both artists sound like they are having
fun and the cheer definitely filters
through.
This is a fitting sister album to
the Faust and Nurse With Wound collaboration
Disconnected. There is a more playful
vibe to Fini!, from Peron's lyrics
(although some of it sounds like idle
studio talk removed from its original
context; "Is this Kate Bush?")
to Liles' disorientating arrangements.
Taken together, the 14 tracks that
make up this album are as varied as
anything dotted throughout the Faust
or Andrew Liles back catalogues but
all the songs sound like they belong
together. There is the kraut stomp
of "The Drummer is on Valium"
and the philosophical "I Have
Lost Faith in Words;" both similar
in spirit but very different in execution.
The majority of the pieces here are
on the shorter side of things, ranging
from 40 seconds to a couple of minutes
in most cases. Sometimes I feel like
they have been stopped far too early,
ideas that could go further are stopped
short but it never feels like I have
been short-changed. Tracks like "Congo
Bongo La La La" might well deserve
to be longer but they still pack the
punch that you want and realistically,
there is only so many long songs an
artist can do in their careers before
they need to shake things up a bit
(and both Liles and Peron are no stranger
to long songs).
Not that it is all little snippets
of sound, there are some meatier pieces
on the CD. The twisted Middle Eastern
music by way of Wümme in "Shake
Your Hooves" is very satisfying.
For five glorious minutes, a fuzzed
out bass guitar propels the track
along like a runaway horse. It is
the perfect length, not outstaying
its welcome but sticking around long
enough to sink your teeth into. However,
things get even better with "It's
Too Loud" as Peron appears in
both stereo channels in various languages
while a Velvet Underground style guitar
rhythm builds up in the background.
If VU kicked Lou Reed out of the band
and hired Peron in his stead then
"Sister Ray" would probably
have started like this.
Considering Liles has played live
as part of Faust and there is at least
one planned performance of Fini! later
this year, I dearly hope he continues
to work with Peron either in or out
of Faust. This album is full of superb
moments and it would be a shame if
this was to be the only release by
the duo.
Weirdomusic.Com
When mayhem artists like Nurse With
Wound's Andrew Liles and Faust's Jean-Hervé
Peron conspire, the result might be
described as acousmaniac. Fini! is
an arsenal of fun that comes on like
a vibra-gun blast to the pineal gland.
The glorious studio tomfuckery of
"The Drummer is on Valium,"
Fini!'s opening cut, let's us know
in no uncertain terms that Krautrock
hasn't stopped mutating after all
these decades, nor has it been successfully
recycled by the archons of mainstream
airwaves. That's one thing that makes
Fini! delightful. It comes on like
an artifact from an alien culture
excavated by reanimated Dadaists from
five feet of moon-dust. Touch not
the obelisk lest centuries of Germanic
gnosis light up your central nervous
system like Meister Eckhart's pinball
machine. This wanton little orgone-grinder
is enhanced with blasts of blago-bung
plus multi-lingual spoken word. "Congo
Bongo La La La," coming in shy
of two minutes, stands out with brilliant
eccentricity, teasing us with a slow
build up of La La La before the Congo
Bongo briefly shakes the bachelor
tree house until it disgorges all
the monkeys. While most cuts are incredibly
brief, leaving the listener a little
hungry for more, much more, and seeming
to be the disc's connective tissue,
"Shake Your Hooves" rises
up like a delirious five-minute ethno-pagan
evocation of Pan.
A sweet release like this demands
its own context, maybe a dainty tea-party
of genteel aristocrats at which you,
stripped naked with cabalistic signs
emblazoned on your shaved body, spin
Fini! at maximum ear-bleeding intensity
before setting fire to the curtains
and riding off on a white ass. You
can claim that you did this at the
behest of "It's Too Loud,"
which sounds like it was recorded
on a Messerschmitt. If this impromptu
circus doesn't result in the New Aeon
of Amon Düül IV, all is
lost. Out of this world! - Steve Aydt
Wonderful
Wooden Reasons
It
doesn't take a genius to infer from
the name of this zine that it's writer
is something of a Faust fan (it's
a line from the track Meadow Meal
on the first Faust album). I'm besotted
by the music these fellas make (in
whatever incarnation) and Fini! is
no exception.
Very much in the Faustian spirit this
is a tangled morass of sounds and
ideas that works really rather well.
We even get to hear (on track 9) the
side of Peron that is rarely seen
these days, that of the acoustic troubadour
as he slowly weaves his guitar and
voice (and whistle) around a happy
little ballad. Occasionally the album
drifts into fully abstracted experimental
territories but this is really to
be expected of both participants and
their wonderfully obtuse sensibilities
but at all points you feel that they
are working to a cohesive vision that
they never once loose sight of. If
only everything in life was this good.
Octopus
Après avoir participé
sous les étiquettes de leurs
"groupes" respectifs, Nurse
With Wound et Faust, à l'expérience
de chassé/croisé musical
de Disconnected, Andrew Liles, désormais
alter ego de Steven Stapleton dans
NWW et Jean-Hervé Péron,
meneur français du combo d'Outre-Rhin,
franchissent encore une fois le Rubicon
pour une nouvelle étape de
leur cheminement collaboratif. visuel
Andrew Liles + Jean-Hervé Péron
Fini ! a à peine commencé
que l'on sent parfaitement la touche
de chacun. L'art de l'échantillonnage
et des liaisons sonores – dans
un registre à la fois poétique
et intrusif - d'Andrew Liles façonne
les ambiances des morceaux comme un
écrivain jouerait de la force
des cadavres exquis, avec un balancement
entre légèreté
et tension qui balise le terrain pour
la vitupérance toujours aussi
singulière de Jean-Hervé
Péron. Entre goût avéré
pour les guitares criardes, qui surgissent,
seule sur "The drummer is on
valium" ou accompagné
de l'orgue sur "We are ready
here", et ce décalage
verbal caractéristique, relent
jovial d'une francophonie insolite
qui amuse visiblement l'intéressé
("Shut up and sit down",
"The fly on the windowsill is
dead", "I lost faith in
words", "Fini !"),
Jean-Hervé Péron slalome
avec une truculence évidente
entre des formes musicales qui demeurent
instables et inattendues. Perturbées
par les intonations râleuses
en studio de Jean-Hervé Péron,
"The fly on the windowsill is
dead" balance avec une incroyable
facilité et sans qu'on y trouve
rien à redire entre la causticité
drolatique de certaines séquences
et une évanescence post-ambient
des plus réussies. Chaque morceau
procède de cet équilibre
bancal, de ces respirations musicales
inspirées et expirées
selon des registres variés,
mais avec des moments privilégiés
quand même en matière
d'intensité sonique comme sur
le très bouillonnant et électrique
"Shake your hooves". Comme
cela est fréquent dans ce genre
d'approche musicale iconoclaste, les
morceaux de format courts sont légions
(huit titre font moins de trois minutes)
mais dépassent la thématique
de l'interlude pour ouvrir des pistes
qu'on aurait peut-être aimé
entendre développées
(l'ethno-jazz frissonnant de "Congo
bongo la la la" ou les digressions
mélodramatiques à l'accent
d'Europe central et autres butinages
musicaux en contrepoint d'"I
do not like to get wet"). Des
choix compréhensibles sans
doute, quand on sait que le disque
a été enregistré
en 36 heures et mixé/masterisé
en une semaine, mais qui ne nous empêchent
pas de garder l'oreille inmanquablement
collée à ce fil d'Ariane
musical, ondulant entre les matières
sonores et les scénarios auditifs
alambiqués.
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