Faust'o - A Pact with Torment

1977 is a fundamental topos in the history of rock, the post-punk cauldron swells beyond measure, with (off)shoots of considerable standing: Talking Heads release "77", neurotic punk-funk, Suicide ooze urban anxieties on their self-titled debut, David Bowie joins the unwritten new wave manifesto by producing the two albums that are part of the Berlin trilogy: "Low" and "Heroes", later completed by "Lodger".

1978 is a testing ground for experimentation, following the assimilation of the many inputs received. And Italy doesn't shy away from getting swept up in the wave: on the back of iconoclastic attitudes, parodies of power, electronic experimentation, and frenzies of clearly London-derived stock, borrowed from the scorn spat in the face of the ruling classes, traditional singer-songwriter fare is pushed to the margins, giving way to the eruption of new, extreme figures, politically incorrect and scandalous: Donatella Rettore, Alberto Camerini, Ivan Cattaneo, exponents of an utterly over-the-top aesthetic that takes shape in blends of punk-ska-reggae; at the same time, the highbrow experiments of Franco Battiato take form, along with the minimal new wave of Krisma, and the nonsense rock of Skiantos.

Amid this general ferment, an LP starts circulating in the underground circuit, its cover almost a clone of "Heroes", in which Bowie's Kemp-inspired miming gives way to a less theatrical, more intimate pose, with the artist looking straight into the eyes of the potential buyer/listener. The style is clearly glam, confirmed by the kohl-rimmed eyes and glossed lips, already messengers of a declared ambiguity and a game of self. The album is titled Suicide and he goes by Faust'o, the pseudonym of Fausto Rossi, yet another clue to his complexity.

A borderline figure, irreverent, indignant and rebellious to the point of outright cheekiness, the artist from Friuli would soon start launching near-kamikaze challenges at the entire system, unsettling the common mindset, moving confidently towards a World/Giant that was ignorant and obtuse, striking in an irreversible and formative way at a small but sensitive audience.

The calling card is seemingly menacing, but the subject matter/title track is handled with a great deal of disenchantment and deflation, with a proudly misanthropic attitude ("I feel everything going on around me is boredom, boredom, boredom. Even the earthquake now just bores me, bores me, bores me. Ah! Suicide! To go back down there again!").

The demolition of false myths continues in "Godi", a kind of mockery of Catholic sexual prudishness, set to a burlesque piano. The reckoning with the bourgeois family microcosm is laid out with sarcasm in "Piccolo Lord", with a harrowing, slow opening soon torn apart by the agitated drive of the drums and the distortion of the guitar, in an alternation blissfully unaware of any stylistic rigor.

The same lack of schema runs through "Il mio sesso", a surreal piece of irony about his own genitalia, between glam divertissement and wave openings, whose multifaceted identity is narrated in the falsetto of "C'è un posto caldo". Closing the record, the insolent challenge thrown at the whole system in "Benvenuti tra i rifiuti", with a pre-dark flavour in some reverb passages reminiscent of the Cure.

The second act is Poco zucchero, released in 1979, steeped in grotesque Devo-like atmospheres ("Cosa rimane") and restless synth ascents raising the curtain on emotional torments ("In tua assenza" and "Il lungo addio"); the tones turn apocalyptic and subdued, over a bed of stretched-out drum layers, effects and catatonic guitars, letting the sax become the protagonist of the long closing track ("Funerale a Praga").

After a spoken-word opening, on J'accuse… amore mio, the closing chapter of the trilogy and the opening of the new decade of the '80s, Faust'o continues down the wave path, drawing not exclusively on the Italian language ("Piccole anime"), raving in a manner reminiscent of David Byrne's "Fear Of Music" – "Disaster" and "Michael Michael (You're Bloody Drunk)" – and turning to self-irony to address the elusive beloved Valentina ("Non mi pettino mai"). J'accuse is the album with which the artist offers himself without any shame to an audience that was certainly not up to the task, historically used to quite different fare and far from imagining the imminent provocation: on the Festivalbar stage he mimes "Hotel Plaza", close to a certain Roxy Music dandyism, sitting on a piano while chewing an apple… he will be literally "binned", but traces of marvellous, decadent surrealism will remain in the lyrics ("Hotel Plaza, amo i tuoi fiori come nevrastenie").

The next step is a surprisingly instrumental album. Out Now, from 1982, is claustrophobia in its purest form, a metallic, dark record, the accelerated heartbeat of a nightmare that won't end ("Orange"), Bowie-esque passages through Berlin undergrounds ("Grey Sand And Wave"), extemporaneous, kaleidoscopic gypsy flourishes with a "spinning top gone mad" effect ("A Cup Of Tea"), ambient stretches containing whispered streams of consciousness ("The Sound Of My Walls"), and closing chatter of horns ("Amedeo's").

The momentary silence seems to have granted the right dose of introspection, allowing him to pinpoint future themes and arrange them with an essential, mature touch on the following Faust'o, far removed from the furious, mad early days, a record of sharp songwriting, equally unsettling but more elegant and seemingly composed. The album is intensely autobiographical, the testimony of a soul in perpetual conflict, wrapped in a form of nihilism well expressed by the recurring use of fire as a metaphor for a solitary self watching from a distance a world from which it keeps its due distance ("Ogni fuoco", "Stracci alle fiamme", "Ultimi fuochi"). Heartfelt warnings try to caution Love against danger/reality, with declamations in the style of Battiato over distorted guitars ("E poi non voltarti mai"); but love doesn't seem to take heed, continuing to hurt and be hurt, lost in a spiral of chilling sadomasochism ("Jeraldine"). Towards the end come the most visionary and decadent episodes: the mournful ballad with a utopian resolution suggested in the chorus of "Alien" ("Alien, alien… alien is a chance, a chance that's falling, falling over and again") and the opening/Mongolian lament of "Rip Van Winkle", a forerunner of the post-Oriental experiments of CSI in the '90s.

Closing out the '80s five years early is the album Love Story, entirely in English. Despite the sentimental, cinematic title, the songwriting and sound have very little that is syrupy or ethically correct about them; the love described by Faust'o is yet another restlessness – this time almost a celebration – of Joy Division at their most expansive, as the title of the opening track, "Exhibition Of Love", seems to suggest, immediately followed by the taut, dry interplay of bass and drums on "Two Walls"; the voice ventures into a nerve-wracking massacre of souls weary of struggling towards a possible resurfacing, on one side a male vocal darker than ever, on the other a soprano fluttering nervously and aristocratically ("Overtones"). The closing track ("Big Beat") opens up to the world, but only to look at it with detachment and remain locked in its own introspection, like a sort of paradoxical incentive to cynicism and misanthropy, hallmarks of consistency worn with courage and constancy.

Almost as a preparatory catharsis aimed at accepting a society in accelerated evolution without letting it leave a mark, while nonetheless cultivating an increasingly detached yet still pulsing critical spirit, the artist devotes a full seven years to the study of technomusicology and early music, arriving in 1992 at the production of Things Are Changing, a record that definitively turns the page on the provocations of the "Faust'o character", giving us back an identity called Fausto Rossi, more pensive and focused on melody rather than on the will to shock. The album oozes light, autumnal sonorities, close to a certain Sakamoto-like research ("In tuo ricordo"); the lyrics turn melancholic and poignant, the opening-up of a self lost and confused over the decision to make, whether to "throw himself" into living or remain shut in the fragile shell of every wound (the beautiful "Tentazione di esistere", which goes "potrei svanire, e poi tornare, e poi svanire e poi tornare… guardare ogni tanto la luna"); the autobiographical thread is picked up again in "Per il mio compleanno", an interplay of barely perceptible lines, in its lightness, and sudden touches, resulting in something taut and hypnotic; soft world music echoes feature in the penultimate track, sung with new-romantic languor and steeped in regret ("Morbide macchine").

While smoothing out some of its rough edges, L'erba, from 1995, built on a more traditionally rock framework, is occasionally visited by quick ethno passages and electronic touches that amplify its pathos; it's a tough record, a fearless anamnesis of hypocritical, falsely sanctimonious social structures in which one feels constrained and yet resists, at times celebrating the redemptive power of intoxicating potions (the title track, "santa l'erba che apre dolcemente il cuore"), at times listing the various objects of repulsion only to relegate them to the delight of an idolizing "mass" ("la scienza, il progresso, la nuova nobiltà"); the romantic ordeal, traces of which the artist leaves on every album, begins with "Perché il mio amore", a mournful questioning of impermanence, with the constant, intrusive breath on the neck of every lover, and continues, with a subdued gait and stretched-out rhythm, on "Chiudi gli occhi (la vita è un sogno)", a crudely visceral letter to a past Love, written by an I almost split from his own bodily dimension, emptied by the absence of the old contact with the Other's flesh. Closing the record, an essential tribute to John Cale sung with Bowie-esque glam swagger, "Close Watch (John Cale)".

Making peace with his own surplus of energy seems like a pipe dream, a goal towards which Fausto's very nature can only grant him a love/hate relationship; the 1996 live album Lost And Found is further testimony to a spirit that remains consistently tormented, yet never tired of stating his personal view of the world and its paradoxical humanity. This comes through eleven demo-tracks which, besides revisiting historic pieces such as "Ogni fuoco", "Jeraldine", "E poi non voltarti mai" and "Alien", seem like a definitive declaration of allegiance to the ambiguity of the glam womb, to refined wave decadence, to the use of the voice as a strand of flexible, nervous metal, languors all magnified by the presence of a virile, courting sax.

The latest chapter of an unease that still feels vivid and effortlessly worn today is Exit, a kind of depressed celebration of the twentieth anniversary of Suicide. The explosions, fuelled by the reckless fury of youth, dissolve into the bitterness of an identity now aware that there is no real, definitive destination, as told in “Ora che ho visto”. The voice becomes a funereal lament, a post-disillusionment weakness, the complaint of an alienation tempted to lay down its arms, in the rock ballad that is the title track (“fuori, fuori dal sogno per lasciare ogni cosa che non si può avere, niente pensieri assoluti e niente paura di essere e vivere”); the desolation of a spirit wounded by the hallucinatory succession of events opens the slurred narration of “Sotto la pioggia al mattino”, comparable, in its guitar and occasionally weary vocals, to certain later episodes of Giorgio Canali's solo work. After the 14 minutes of pure, merciless sociology of the masses that is “Blues” (“ma come posso distinguerli se hanno un’unica espressione? …milioni di uomini tutti insieme sono un unico animale grasso e squilibrato con pelle di alluminio senza muscoli né ossa, solo l’osso del cuore”), the closing track is a lullaby for grown-up victims/executioners of themselves, Don Quixotes of a world never fully accepted (“Gli occhi si chiudono”).

Fausto Rossi, through his live shows, continues to proudly spew out cynical truths, personal devastations, sharp paradoxes, and sheer insolence, in total consistency with the old pact he struck with torment and in faithful observance of his premature marriage to alienation. All this in front of an audience made up of survivors of the 80s wave delirium, still caught in generational webs nourished by the same torment, and newcomers in search of a raw, courageous depth, scattered and obscured by the artificial light of so much imitation.

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