Faust, Cold Cave and Aluk Todolo kick off WFMU Fest on Thursday night

Faust at the Music Hall of Williamsburg

By Kaveh Ardalan

Monday, October 5th, 2009

We weren't even sure if the set had started yet. What's the line between soundcheck and song when a band opens with a brass fanfare played from atop the Music Hall of Wiliamsburg balcony while a vacuum cleaner hums along onstage? But Faust slowly drew together these incidental sounds into the outline of a song. The center held, but not for long. For most of their set, Faust disrupted their pieces with clever art-pranks: throwing bits of rubble into the audience, playing along with a creaking cement mixer, vacuuming the stage, attacking cymbals with an electric sander, painting along with the music and interrupting a guitar solo by hurling objects at one another and demanding that the noise stop. All of these onstage antics were jarring and genuinely funny, a constant source of pleasure and surprise from a band whose other formal innovations—drones, mechanical rhythms, collage techniques—have been widely incorporated into pop and art music alike. Over the course of their career-spanning performance, Faust made a strong case for an avant-garde based on good humor, personal warmth and fun.

If calculated boredom is more like your idea of fun, then Cold Cave might just be your new sorta fav band. Their songs provided a nice enough soundtrack for counting every impeccably combed hair on that Prurient guy's head or for brainstorming adjectives to describe Wesley Eisold's boots (the winner: "Teutonic"). The songs typically started with a low drone before launching into synth-pop segments with little feeling or forward momentum. Disengaged as they were, Cold Cave held some promise; the best songs were carried by bright melodies laid atop broken, stuttering beats and noisy filigree.

Cold Cave's set was preceded by a pummeling from French trio Aluk Todolo. With little warning, the black-clad group started the night by launching into a sustained chord that assumed mass and velocity, like a fire engine hurtling towards a subway train. That opening chord slowly gave way to lengthy, suite-like songs, with the bassist maintaining a rumbling low end and the drummer bluntly urging the swelling sound along. All the while, Aluk Todolo's guitarist (and de facto leader) ran through a variety of loops, effects, tunings, and restringings that provided variations on the physical heft of the band's initial attack. Humorless? Sure. But Aluk Todolo's set maintained a visceral intensity that challenged and pleased the audience, who responded with their own roaring, droning applause.