Faust - 'Seventy One Minutes Of...' (ReR)

Usually if the duration is in the title, I find the task of listening daunting. Maybe that's the reason I never gelled with Seventy One Minutes Of Faust, which is really a combination of their last LP Munich & Elsewhere with some 70s-recorded miscellany, released much later. This hodgepodge lack of cohesion is also part of the problem - even though there's some great, zany art rockin' at play here (the blown out "Baby', or 'Don't Take Roots'), it's certainly not a coherent, self-standing statement like So Far or IV. And the presentation is murky and confusing - the titles are even hard to read on the back of the CD, the artwork rote and uninspiring. It feels a bit like the Faust version of Incesticide, scraping the barrel for completists, at least before their 90s reunion and subsequent split into two competing strains of Faust. Listening today, it's a lot better than I remembered it being, though there's no classic cuts, and the fact that there are seven tracks named 'Party' makes it hard for any to be memorable. These 'Party' tracks are actually the stronger material, though I'm not sure how many of them were intended for release; the fidelity is very crisp (the electronics on 'Party 1' float above the gurgling improv swamp, sounding like something from a more contemporary electronica-indie scene) and they just feel a bit jammy, even for Faust. There's some alternate versions of known Faust commodities; the first 'Party' is a slower take on the song from the beginning of Tapes, with a really nice layer of spacey guitar that brings this into Cosmic Jokers territory. 'Party 5' sounds like British art-rock, maybe some post-Art Bears RIO band. The closer, 'Party 4', includes everything and the kitchen sink (and lots of babbling in English and German). Despite how satisfying most of these tracks are if taken individually, it somehow doesn't add up to feel like much. Yet this stays on the shelf, and will be upgraded to a vinyl edition if one comes by, because, well... you never know.

American Analog Set - 'Through the 90s: Singles and Beyond' (Emperor Jones)

AmAnSet's final release for Emperor Jones has the slight feel of something you might release into a tissue, though I'm not sure why this is. The material is high quality enough - when it appeared on the 7" format, it worked really well, especially on songs like 'Diana Slowburner II' and 'Magnificent Seventies'. This is a long compilation that chops up the original chronology no doubt in an attempt to make it feel more like an 'album'. But instead of a Slip n Slide of Analog Set fun, it can't avoid sounding like an odds and ends collection (which, to be fair, it is). That early Fun of Watching Fireworks feel is a flaming stone away from the band's last few records, and it gets its last gasp. The organ-driven tension drives ahead with the tap-tap whirr, especially on songs like 'On My Way'. If the 'sounds the same' phenomenon was more applicable to the earlier material, compiling all of these tracks together really makes it apparent. The cover photo is a bit of a departure too, though a very visually enticing (almost candy-like) rollerskate pile it is. If I knew how to program the cheap portable Discman I use as a CD player I could try putting these tracks back in sequence and thus pretend I'm listening to all the AmAnSet 7"s I don't actually have; maybe that would feel a bit more cohesive. I gotta mention the rejected jingle 'Dr. Pepper' (as I sampled the beverage just yesterday) though I think they were lucky because it's way better as The Golden Band's 'The Wait' (for a time, probably my single favorite AmAnSet song, though now I give that award to 'Aaron and Maria'). I just love using the abbreviation AmAnSet but this is probably the last time as I dont have anything else to review by them here.