About the event

How does it fit - avant-garde culture in the north of Germany and the French "savoir-vivre" ?   Quite simply - genuine French man Jean-Hervé Peron, founding member of the original Krautrock band Faust , invites to a "family gathering" in Schiphorst / Schleswig Holstein. A small but sophisticated and at the same time very   informal festival that offers unusual music and a lot of potential... Indeed, the origin of this festival was a private event in 1996 which Peron and his partner Carina Varain had organized   for friends, neighbours and colleagues .

The informal character is still there. The food is better and less expensive than at other either commercial or idealistic events. There is no strict division between artists and visitors who meet and talk shop until late into the night or over breakfast. You can borrow bikes to cycle to the next village for small errands. And those who camp on the grounds or sleep in one of the dormitories will enjoy the comfort of a caring almost private accomodation.

The festival has its own extraordinary charme because of this mixture of ambiance and art. The emphasis is clearly on music but there will also be installations, stage-acting and new musical versions to films. The programme offers a mix of   a well guided cultural event and   spontaneous and unpredictable happenings. World famous artists meet newcomers or unknown Faust acquaintances and every evening there will be sessions with musicians whose names will be drawn.

The line-up

Besides Faust as the hosting band, there are other highlights at this year's festival: Charles Hayward who is going to present his new band Shape Moreton; The Legendary Pink Dots around Edward Ka-Spel; Marble Sheep from Japan who will play two sets - an experimental one with members of Faust as well as a set on their own; Asmus Tietchensens will surprise everybody with a rare live performance;   La Société des Timides à la Parade des Oiseaux (La STPO) from Rennes will play their inimitable mix of Rock, Jazz and Neo-Classical music, and Low Tide Digitals with Luigi Archetti and Bo Wigand are among the best that New Music has to offer nowadays.

But the "second row" is rather high class as well. There is Troum from Bremen, who provoke a veritable cross-continent tourism during their US tours; S/T from Frankfurt are considered (in particular in the UK) to be one of the few current authentic representatives of   Krautrock; ...Bender from London who forge links between mediaval and folkloristic drones (such as mediaval church organ sounds, sounds of the sitar, the bagpipes or the accordeon) and modern eperimental sound collages; or Kiew from Lüneburg who use   seemingly opposing industrial and techno-breakbeats to express their vision of a "new" avant-garde.

Furthermore two members of the Eighties' club-legend Schwefel are going to pay their respect to the avant-garde of earlier times. They play their sound track to short movies by Kenneth Anger. Then there will be Instant Drone Factory - founded for a performance at last year's festival - is going to present their first CD; PermanentFatalError, whose music was recently honoured by the German/French TV station Arte; Franck Lantignac and his music/film project; Geoff Leigh (Ex Henry Cow) and Lucianne Lasalle as "Henrico Reed and Lulu"; Electrix Garden who add "dancibilty" to the concept of   fluxus; Horacz Bluminth and his solo performance "Vox Babylon", and Ghetto Raga Echodrive with Günther Schickert and Tom Zunk are underlining the film "Berlin. Sinfony of a City" with their music.