Faust Anne Imhof

Isabelle Faust is one of my favorite violinists. She puts her heart and soul into everything she plays. The unusual and varied set of works on this recording display her gifts to an almost sublime degree of excellence and execution. She knows how to "get into" the music and make it speak. I value this selection because of its variety and recommend it to anyone with a sense of adventure beyond the traditional norms, of which she is also quite able, as witnessed by this recording. She is, quite simply put, an outstanding talent and this recording shows her admirable abilities completely and well.

"After dipping into the archive to deliver a series of essential reissues, Bureau B continues to encourage the chaotic brilliance of Faust with an LP of brand new music curated by originator Zappi Diermaier and a band of musical friends, including Uwe Bastiansen, Elke Drapatz, Dirk Dresselhaus, Jochen Arbeit, Sonja Kosche, Andrew Unruh, and fellow founding member Gunther Wüsthoff. Over the years, Faust has become many things, each as separate as the fingers but as together as the hand that makes up their eponymous fist. From 1971 to 1974, the Hamburg band blazed a bold sonic trail, helping to create the distinct and delirious strand of German music we've come to know as Krautrock.

Johann Sebastian Bach and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin go back a long way together. This recording, made with the welcome participation of Isabelle Faust and Antoine Tamestit, follows the complete violin concertos (2019), which left a lasting impression. Ever since a memorable first recording in the late 1990s, the Berlin musicians have returned regularly to the inexhaustible source of the Brandenburgs. They have achieved a sovereign mastery of what is not a single work, but six. In their hands, they become successive episodes of a piece of musical theater in love with dance, transparent sound and freedom.

"After dipping into the archive to deliver a series of essential reissues, Bureau B continues to encourage the chaotic brilliance of Faust with an LP of brand new music curated by originator Zappi Diermaier and a band of musical friends, including Uwe Bastiansen, Elke Drapatz, Dirk Dresselhaus, Jochen Arbeit, Sonja Kosche, Andrew Unruh, and fellow founding member Gunther Wüsthoff. Over the years, Faust has become many things, each as separate as the fingers but as together as the hand that makes up their eponymous fist. From 1971 to 1974, the Hamburg band blazed a bold sonic trail, helping to create the distinct and delirious strand of German music we've come to know as Krautrock.

Legendary experimental group Faust make a hugely welcome return with album 'Just Us'. Starting out in 1971 and releasing a succession of incredibly well loved LP's, 'Just Us' shows us they have lost nothing of what made them so special all those years ago; twelve tracks of percussive-based experimental music with a motorik undercurrent.

The music of contemporary Lithuanian composer Peteris Vasks has a reputation for depicting nature, a grand tradition in the northern countries, and for creating structure that examine the relationship between nature and human culture. One might also add that from the evidence of the music here, which dates from between 1972 and 2011, Vasks is one of the few composers, in the Baltics or anywhere else, to succeed in gradually moving in the direction of tonal music without a sharp shift in direction. That's a testament to the strength of his musical personality.

Songwriter and pianist Anne Clark has been a cult figure since the early '80s and has amassed a rather sizable catalog despite her small but rabid following. She writes nearly-Gothic love songs full of obsession and pathos, and pretty orchestral settings with clever instrumental figures and stinging piano runs and minor-key epiphanies. She's a consummate artist, playing to her strengths while trying to subtly, but surely, extend her reach, and always following her own muse, even when it takes her into dissonant territory. Most of her albums are out of print even on CD, and sell for collector's prices when they can be found. This is too bad, because Clark has assembled a solid, if quirky, and passionately honest body of work. This best-of issued by Beehive is truly that. It features 24 tracks and clocks in at over 75 minutes. Many of these are Clark's most lovely songs, such as "The Sitting Room," "All Night Party" (with Vini Reilly of Durutti Column), the "12" remix" of "Our Darkness," and "The Last Emotion," as well as instrumental themes such as "Swimming" and "An Ordinary Life".