Tony Conrad Collection no. 15)
Tony Conrad with Faust
Outside the Dream Syndicate ALIVE!
2005
Table of the Elements
[Cadmium] TOE-CD-48
Compact disc, print, foil stamp, stickers
Minimalist pioneer Tony Conrad and notorious krautrock progenitors Faust met just three times: in the studio to record the groundbreaking "Outside the Dream Syndicate" in 1972, and twice on the concert stage in the mid-1990s. This recording documents their third and final encounter, at Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, February 18, 1995. The difference between the original session and this live event is astonishing. While Conrad's aggressive string sound was tamed in the studio by producer Uwe Nettlebeck (Conrad has complained that the mix made him "sound like a hippie"), here it is full of menace and ferocity, and in tandem attack with the equally belligerent violin of Jim O'Rourke, it conjures a raging wall of sound. When the Faust rhythm section finally kicks in, no one is in the mood for restraint, and the whole thing bolts on a merciless, scorched-earth gallop. Bassist Jean-Herve Peron plays with such fury that he snaps a string (no easy feat on a bass guitar), shreds the flesh on his fingers, and is soon covered in blood; meanwhile drummer Werner "Zappi" Diermaier pounds away, standing, in his inimitable, robotic style. After a relentless 40-minute onslaught, Peron signals the set's abrupt conclusion by smashing a brick with a sledgehammer, while Diermaier destroys his drum kit a la Keith Moon. At this point the elegant atmosphere of Queen Elizabeth Hall thoroughly disintegrates, and the antagonized crowd nearly riots. Hecklers and supporters continue to shout each other down -- until they're drowned out by a rollicking encore.
The booklet contains brief interviews with Conrad and Peron, and a first-person account from Gang of Four's Andy Gill, who sounds justifiably intimidated by the entire performance. The packaging includes alternate photos from the 1965 photo-booth strip that graced the original studio release, plus stickers and a silver foil stamp.
“A large curtain of scrim hides half the stage. In front of it, two men stand motionless, one a barefoot bassist, the other a balding drummer standing, Mo Tucker-style, behind a drum kit which, in the intervening 20 years, has shrunk to just one snare, one tom-tom and one cymbal. Behind the scrim, backlit so his shadow looms hugely, is Tony Conrad, the minimalist-violinist with whom Faust once recorded an album entitled Outside The Dream Syndicate. A cellist and another violinist sit alongside him, also motionless. Conrad plays a chord, then keeps on playing it, a piercing, mesmeric drone of immense, ear-endangering volume. Some time later — about 10 minutes into the performance — the other string players join in with similarly minimal intent, setting up a static harmonic drone which continues for another 10 or 15 minutes before the bassist and drummer suddenly launch into the kind of riff which Status Quo might have discarded as being too basic. The drummer bangs each drum alternately at regular tempo, looking for all the world as if he’s jogging on the spot; the barefoot bassist, meanwhile, pummels his instrument with such singleminded fury that, shortly after he begins, one of the thick, well-wound strings has snapped. Have you ever tried to snap a bass string? It’s not easy. Usually, you need pliers, but there are no tools available on-stage tonight. “
—Andy Gill, Mojo
“…Conrad masterfully created a piece that no matter when it was produced evokes such a strong physical reaction. This is raw, building, blistering, pounding, droning brilliance! The way momentum keeps building works its way into your body and about half way into the piece you can't stop from getting completely wrapped up in it. The droning violin, the dirty percussion, the gut wrenching passion underneath and above it all!
It's amazing how in these sounds you can hear so much of a handful of contemporary favorites: Godspeed You Black Emperor's explosive drama, The Dirty Three at their most wild and rocking, Swans/Angels Of Light's blistering poignancy, but it all ends up seeming sorta like little league in comparison to the blood and guts that oozes out of this performance. As always Table Of The Elements appropriately package the cd with the care it deserves including some nice short conversations with Conrad and two great stickers of Conrad's face. Absolutely recommended!”
Aquarius Records
“Apparently minimalist pioneer Tony Conrad and notorious krautrock progenitor Faust only ever met three times; once in the studio whilst recording 'Outside The Dream Syndicate' and twice onstage during the 1990's where they brought that album to life in the live arena. A recording of their third and final encounter, 'Outside the Dream Syndicate Alive' was taped at Queen Elizabeth Hall London on February 18th 1995 and acts as an astonishing diktat on the raw power afforded by the live arena. Worth owning for the blazing row that ensues between members of the audience after the show finishes alone (choice putdown: "shut the fuck up you middle-class prick"), 'Outside the Dream Syndicate..." is pretty hard going; with Conrad's aggravated strings gnawing at Jim O'Rourke's equally gobby violin, whilst Faust's rhythm section is typically merciless. Closing with a brick being smashed by a sledgehammer, this is not for the delicate hearted; but for those who relish a live experience that extends beyond over-priced T-shirts and spilt Stella, then 'Outside the Dream Syndicate...' is a thrilling experience.”
Boomkat
“It's amazing how in these sounds you can hear so much of a handful of contemporary favorites: Godspeed You Black Emperor's explosive drama, The Dirty Three at their most wild and rocking, Swans/Angels Of Light's blistering poignancy, but it all ends up seeming sorta like little league in comparison to the blood and guts that oozes out of this performance. As always Table Of The Elements appropriately package the cd with the care it deserves including some nice short conversations with Conrad and two great stickers of Conrad's face. Absolutely recommended!”
Amazon
“Have you ever tried to snap a bass string? It’s not easy.”
Interview with Tony Conrad and Jean-Herve Peron (Faust)
TONY CONRAD: I basically said, “Keep an even beat going throughout the whole thing,” which is almost impossible. When I worked with Faust, I told the bass player this, but they didn’t believe me. They don’t even remember working with me. When it all came back recently, they had no recollection at all of working with me. I think they knew the record existed, somehow Uwe Nettelbeck had sucked it out of them. There were probably many reasons for that, including the fact that somebody must have been burning a pot field around where they were working, because there was so, so much pot smoke in the air. It was incredible. And who could remember anything under those conditions. I told them that they should just keep the beat steady, but when you play like that for a half-hour, it’s really unbelievably difficult and painful. Like when we played at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, Jean was playing with great fervour. I said, “Let’s play for 50 minutes.” The set broke down and we stopped early, and he came back and he was very excited, and he showed how his fingers were bleeding. He was ready to play more — the flesh was actually stripped off his fingers, (laughs) it was a nightmare, I couldn’t believe it was happening.
Q: Why and how did the collaboration with Faust come about? Why did you choose them? Were you aware of their music?
TC: I was approached by a filmmaker in New York, who was aware of my music, who was from Hamburg, and he told me that he knew a producer who would be interested in me, and that maybe we could make a record. So we set up a date, and as a matter of fact, at the time I had been working as an electronics technician for a small company that was planning to send me to Paris. That was because I was good at sales, and we were going to have an expo in Paris. But then the kid who owned the company got his college roommate to learn the electronics instead of me boning up on my French, and his roommate went and I stayed at home. So I quit, and decided to go to Europe anyway. La Monte had been commissioned to do a room for [large annual German art show] Documenta in ‘72 and he hired me to be his engineer. So I did that, and when I was finished, I showed my films around, and went to Berlin, because I had, something more than a decade earlier, spent half a year bumming around in East Berlin, and I had all of these friends from this very strange scene, which is now part of some history that is so weird and gone that no one will ever understand how strange it was. But it was the most extraordinary situation I was ever in in my life, and I wanted to go back and hang out with my friends in East Berlin. And after I did that, I flew to Hamburg, and was met by Uwe Nettelbeck, who took me to this farmhouse, and there were these people hanging around out there, I didn’t know who they were. [laughs] It was these people Faust. And they had been, to some substantial degree, incarcerated in this farmhouse for months, and they had their partners and sexual liaisons and different social complexities enacted on a long-term basis within this farmhouse. It was a microcosm, where everything seemed to have been evolving in some strange way over the course of months and months. It was no wonder that they really didn’t really have a lot of involvement with me, and I thought of them as musicians that I could use in my record. But Uwe said that they wanted to do stuff too, so we did one that was my style, and one that was more like a rock ‘n’ roll style. That’s how there are two sides.
JEAN-HERVÉ PERON: Ohh Tony! The Queen Elizabeth Hall gig was quite something! I thought it lasted longer than 50 minutes though. Time is relative said Einstein and can be bent. Zappi and I (and Tony) agreed that I would stop the piece (someone had to stop it you know or else we’d just all dehydrate on stage as no one would dare stop it it first) and the sign was me hitting a cobblestone with a sledge hammer (just to make sure no one could incidentally overhear it), and that was my main concern during the whole show even when I lost my plectrum in the first five minutes and realized I did not think of a spare one; even when I broke the E-string on my bass; even when I saw blood dripping at my feet. The idea of this small, square, hard, granite stone and this small, hard, steel head and me, me being as the vector of a perfect trajectory ending with a clean impact and hundreds of people watching this... Oooh Tony, what if I miss? What if I miss?! This obsessive idea helped me through the whole show. The violins and the cello were burning their high-pitch ferociously equalized tones in my brain, Zappi was sweating his wild dog-sweat and the stone just laid there, waiting patiently for its fortune. That’s why I was so excited, at the end... Because it stopped... Because I did not miss.
Q: I was at the QEH gig and it really was an extraordinary experience. I’m sure it was more than 50 minutes as well.
J-HP: A strange thing began to happen after about 15 minutes where the way your ears work seemed to change; it’s hard to explain exactly but several people I spoke to felt the same. A few years later I spoke to Zappi about the gig and all he said was “I think it was very loud” — as indeed it was! I remember Jim O’Rourke and Tony fiddling at the mixing desk with a look in their eyes, which was a mixture of anger (the sound man did not meet their wishes obviously), amusement, mischief and insanity. The fact that people had the feeling that “something changed” is probably purely morphological: The great Lord designed our ear system with a “limiter” so whatever comes to our ears and exceeds whatever the Maker thought intolerable will be cut off. Our ears close! Yeah, Hallelujah, that’s high-tech, that is love, that is a wonder, and it is good.
