Faun

The main attraction of today has got to be the band Faun.

I don’t really know where to start with Faun. I don’t know when I discovered their music or how but I do know that the instant I heard them I fell in love and I own most of their CDs. They were the band that opened up the door of this whole genre, the band that first made me want to go to this festival. Be warned, you will get a video spam here but it will be well worth the time to listen.

Firstly I should give a short bio of the band... Faun was founded in 2002 and has been going strong since even though it’s had a fair few line-up changes. They play beautiful acoustic music as well as some more technical influenced tunes. I don’t know what it is that makes Faun extra special. Their vocals are stunning, calming, inspiring, and powerful. The percussion is quite simply amazing. The other instruments, which I can’t list because there are so many different ones, are so exciting even if I get really annoyed working out all the instruments present in each song or tune! Certainly, I have never found anyone to replace or better the band Faun, in this genre, and they are one of my favourite bands cross genre.

Anyway, onto the music!

I genuinely don’t know what to show you so I guess I’ll start with their new-ish music video for their album “Von den Elben” (Of the Elves). Although this album is a bit of a different sound to their previous projects, it’s still amazing. The song is called “This Cold Night” and is the story of a man who travels to his beloved’s house and she won’t let him in. Eventually, because of how cold it is she opens up and they spend the night together and everyone’s happy. The lyrics make the story a lot more beautiful!

This next song is called Isis and, again, has really poetic lyrics. It’s also a special song for me as it holds a few special memories. It was the first song I learned to play on the guitar about two years ago and it’s also the tune that I played (intentionally badly) during my examined play. My playing transitioned into a section of this song and just hearing this melody, and Oliver’s voice was enough to calm me down… for about a minute!

However, I don’t think I should just go on about Oliver’s voice because, lovely as it is, to overlook the women of the group would be a sin! The female vocals are always exceptionally strong as shown in this song, “Loibere Risen” which is one of my favourites and can be found on their album Renaissance.

And this video is the first one I saw by Faun and, as it was uploaded in 2007, that suggests I discovered them at around that time. I’d been looking for something like this in music for a long time, something otherworldly and magical, and listening to this I knew that I had found it.

If you like what you've heard then you can visit Faun by clicking here (available in English and German). If you didn't then you're crazy.

The photo at the top was commandeered from Faun's facebook page.