insidemattstanleyshead - How I learned to stop caring and love FAUSTO!

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What is Fausto?

On the 13th October 2013, Fausto updated their facebook with the following missive, ‘ATTN EVERYONE: FUCK OFF’. This was announced alongside a picture of an 8 year-old Feyenoord supporter flipping the bird and generally looking like an obnoxious shit. I couldn’t tell you why they did this, but it’s actually the perfect visual metaphor for a band as irreverent as theirs. In fact, if tasked to predict the nature of Fausto’s music relying solely on their wall posts, you’d probably emerge not far from the mark.

Fausto’s songs are as short and loud as their intentionally capitalised statuses, rarely clocking in past the 30 second mark. They explore important topics such as night club clientele, stubbing a toe, or being punched in the shins and generally swagger about like a chihuahua in a leather jacket who’s run out of fucks. Fausto currently have one ‘album’, or rather, they have a photograph of a garroted chicken accompanied by 15 minutes of pure snot that sounds like it was recorded on wax cylinders in a hurricane, and quite honestly, its one of the most refreshing releases to come out of our local scene in a long time.Why is it great to have them around? There is an old Norse poem called Lokasenna, the jist of which revolves around Thors mate Loki being forcibly removed from a god party, only to return with the sole intention of winding everyone up. The tale runs an interesting parallel to a story about Fausto, where they’re told they could be blacklisted after they take the piss out of some mummy-managed bands during a set. Instead of apologising they return to the feast (sorry, take it online) and continue to stir the shit with hilarious effect. This results in an all too public display of delicious irony by the offended party. While it might appear that our protagonists in these two tales are behaving unacceptably, I would object. There is a necessity in their mischief. It serves as a lure for the arrogance inherent in the privileged that says ‘how dare you criticise me!’, then lets us all have a look and a laugh because we’d never bite…right? The beauty is that rising to the bait proves that you don’t ‘get it’, and leaves you in a position similar to that of a seal cruising the air between two killer whale flukes thinking it has the upper hand. To return fire is fruitless in these cases, most obviously because you are giving the prankster exactly what they want, but more so, they really don’t care, AND THAT’S THE POINT! You want my advice? Stop caring! I did, and I’ve never looked back!

‘THIS BAND HAVE 270 LIKES ON FACEBOOK’

In a world as subjective as music, giving a toss about what people think should be pretty low on anybodies list of concerns. Unfortunately, ours is a world in which facebook ‘likes’ and youtube views are often identified as a measure of quality. So much so, that companies emerge to harvest them for you via remote Indonesian archipelagos. There are also applications that effectively trap your ‘like’ for an artist before you can hear their music, often discovering that they don’t even have any to offer. I’ve noticed this becoming more and more apparent, especially amongst young bands emerging in local scenes. The cold stockpiling of numbers creates a false sense of accomplishment that casts a dark shadow on the egos of the members. The implications of this cultural shift are devastatingly sad to me. It says that as musicians we prefer statistics to our art. That we would rather have 20,000 Tongans not listening to that song we don’t have just so we can show our friends how famous we are. This is why it is so great having a band like Fausto around. They hold up a mirror to the stupidity that we create and try piss us off with our own reflections. My only concern is that I appear to have created a paradox for myself. If everyone were more like Fausto there would be no need for Fausto and so Fausto couldn’t exist…and that would be a shame, not that I care of course. Fausto suck.

LIKE MY FACEBOOK BECAUSE THATS ALL THAT MATTERS!!!

Read more by Matt Stanley HERE