*160 copies limited edition* Pentiments is extremely honored to present American composer Rick Corrigan’s original soundtrack for Faustfilm: An Opera, Stan Brakhage’s seldom-seen 1987 experimental psychodrama. The first of what would come to be a four-part series, Faustfilm: An Opera saw the preeminent experimental filmmaker venturing into territories strikingly different from those previously explored in his films, utilizing actors, set designs, soundtracked music and a loose adaptation of Goethe’s Faust as its constituting elements rather than photographic or hand-painted abstraction. The result is a highly idiosyncratic masterwork that documents the unique creative synergy that existed between Brakhage, Corrigan and lead actor Joel Haertling during this time, and it remains incomparable in the history of experimental cinema to this day.

For fans of experimental music, however, its soundtrack should prove to be no less indelible. Composed in a primitive fashion and with a pervasive sense of the uncanny identical to that of its visual complement, the work threads together several lines and fragments that continually merge the domains of avant-garde electronic music and tape-based musique concrète, marked occasionally by the diegetic playing of Faust’s horn and, most notably, the voice of Brakhage himself narrating Faust’s thoughts and episodes throughout. Like the film itself, the soundtrack stands as a singular achievement that demands the attention of enthusiasts of unsung experimental works of the past. Our hope is that this release will provide it the opportunity to gain the recognition it has always deserved.