CAMP is a residential arts facility in the French Pyrenees. It’s a place where great art is made, new movements are formed, new ideas are explored and groundbreaking people are nurtured. CAMP is located in Aulus les Bains, the last village before the France/Spain Pyrenean frontier chain. The location is spectacular – we are nestled at 750m above sea level, surrounded by snowcapped peaks over 3000m high, ancient forests and cascading waterfalls. There are eagles, lammergeiers, vultures, ibex and bears. Walk out of the residency, and within ten minutes you are completely alone in one of the most beautiful mountain landscapes in Europe. Aulus les Bains is also a spa village – there are hot water springs, and a thermal spa in the village to take advantage of the healing and relaxing properties of the water.

Workshop dates: 10/05/2023 – 2023-05-15

The legend of Faust – the commune at Wümme, the drugs and naked donkey rides, the London breakthrough, the pneumatic drills and periods of “disappearance” – is almost as large as the music. But not quite – Faust’s opus, from their explosive eponymous debut in 1971 to “Punkt”, the missing album finally released last year, is one of the heaviest, most epic influences on modern rock, electronic, noise and DIY experimental music.

This unique workshop will be led by Faust founder Jean-Hervé Péron and Amaury Cambuzat, founder of the band Ulan Bator, and faUSt member since 1996.

Jean-Hervé Péron was born in Morroco, raised in France, learned music (theory, guitar and trumpet) from an early age, and formed various groups (folk, dixie, jazz) throughout his teens. He travelled the roads of Europe and the USA for a number of years, before moving to Hamburg in 1971, where he founded the band Faust. He has been the project’s driving force for over fifty years, always keeping the band on a radical trajectory, producing over 30 albums, performing around the world, and giving masterclasses in France, Portugal, Hungary, Poland, Australia, Greece, and China. Jean-Hervé is also the founder of the utopic anarchist get-together Avantgarde Festival in his home town of Schiphorst.

French multi-instrumentalist, producer and composer Amaury Cambuzat trained as a classical pianist, attending the Suresnes conservatory before picking up the guitar – it soon became his preferred instrument, and he eventually founded the seminal post-rock band Ulan Bator in 1993. The band recorded their eponymous debut in a disused chalk mine, and began their long-standing relationship with faUSt in 1996. In 2012 Amaury created the Let Go Ego Sound Studio, and recently mixed and mastered faUSt’s last album Punkt (as well as remastering the entire Faust 1971-1974 box set).

Experimentation is the essential flow of this workshop – taking place indoors at CAMP, in our performance and practice spaces, and outdoors in the epic landscape; we’ll spend five days listening, playing, talking, and building something special. We’ll be following the Faust modus operandi – jamming, experimenting, sound-making, discussing, recording, sharing ideas and having a lot of fun.

In Jean-Hervé’s own words: “Let’s spend five days experimenting with our instruments, our voices. Let’s present and confront our different perceptions of art. Let’s be a group of like-minded people heading to nowhere special, but eager to get somewhere where it is not about us, but rather about listening, about not-playing, about chaos and silence, about cooking and drones, about hips and clusters… some of us might be accomplished artists, others just people on their way to more. Amaury and I will share some of the experiences we made on- and off-stage – me in my 50 or so years with Faust and faUSt, Amaury with his 30 or so years with Ulan Bator. We are long-time partners on stage, and in workshops. I am a fervent believer in Fluxus and Dada. RUND IST SCHOEN!”

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