Not Music

Not Music is the tenth studio album by Stereolab, released in November 2010. The album is a collection of unreleased material which was recorded at the same time as Chemical Chords.

Background

Not Music was released in 2010, one year after Stereolab went on a hiatus. Most of the songs on the album were recorded in the same session as the band's previous album, Chemical Chords. The album also contained remixed versions of "Silver Sands" and "Neon Beanbag," two songs that previously appeared on Chemical Chords.

Reception

Not Music has received generally positive reviews. On the review aggregate site Metacritic, the album has a score of 70 out of 100, indicating "Generally favorable reviews."

Arnold Pan of PopMatters gave the album a positive review, writing "All in all, the catchiest tracks on Not Music make a good soundtrack for strolling down memory lane, with Stereolab offering fresh takes on old triumphs, rather than just reliving them." Rebecca Raber of Pitchfork Media was also positive, writing "I suspect it won't be long before we realize that the leftovers of a band like Stereolab are still better than main dishes offered up by many of their peers."The A.V. Club's Christian Williams wrote that while the record felt padded near the end, "[f]or reheated leftovers, however, Not Music is delicious."

Faust

Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend. He is a scholar who is highly successful yet dissatisfied with his life, which leads him to make a pact with the Devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. The Faust legend has been the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical works that have reinterpreted it through the ages. "Faust" and the adjective "Faustian" imply a situation in which an ambitious person surrenders moral integrity in order to achieve power and success for a delimited term.

The Faust of early books—as well as the ballads, dramas, movies, and puppet-plays which grew out of them—is irrevocably damned because he prefers human to divine knowledge; "he laid the Holy Scriptures behind the door and under the bench, refused to be called doctor of Theology, but preferred to be styled doctor of Medicine". Plays and comic puppet theatre loosely based on this legend were popular throughout Germany in the 16th century, often reducing Faust and Mephistopheles to figures of vulgar fun. The story was popularised in England by Christopher Marlowe, who gave it a classic treatment in his play, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (1604). In Goethe's reworking of the story two hundred years later, Faust becomes a dissatisfied intellectual who yearns for "more than earthly meat and drink" in his life.

Faust (disambiguation)

Faust is the protagonist of a popular German tale who makes a pact with the Devil; the tale is the basis of many works.

Works based on the tale of Faust

The name may refer to one of these notable works of art based on the tale:

Film

Literature

Faust (opera)

Faust is a grand opera in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play Faust et Marguerite, in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part 1. It debuted at the Théâtre Lyrique on the Boulevard du Temple in Paris on 19 March 1859.

Performance history

Faust was rejected by the Paris Opera, on the grounds that it was not sufficiently "showy", and its appearance at the Théatre-Lyrique was delayed for a year because Adolphe d'Ennery's drama Faust was playing at the Porte St. Martin. The manager Léon Carvalho (who cast his wife Marie Miolan-Carvalho as Marguerite) insisted on various changes during production, including cutting several numbers.

Faust was not initially well received. The publisher Antoine Choudens, who purchased the copyright for 10,000 francs, took the work (with added recitatives replacing the original spoken dialogue) on tour through Germany, Belgium, Italy and England, with Marie Miolan-Carvalho repeating her role.