BY STEVEN ROSEN

Krautrock, art rock, indie rock, psychedelic rock, folk rock, cabaret rock, punk rock, progressive rock, experimental rock...all the terms fit and, at the same, are rendered irrelevant when Faust plays. The band, which formed in Germany in 1971, has evolved into still-vital elder statespersons of "new music" that defies easy description but is enormously innovative and inspiring.

Faust - along with Can, Neu!, Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk - is classified as "Krautrock" because of their rock tastes and avant-garde sensibilities. Faust early on mixed experimental forays with noise, improvisation, drone and repetition that showed a Velvet Underground/Grateful Dead influence while also being as attuned to European modernist traditions, especially Stockhausen, as American blues and folk. It was a 1974 Faust song, actually, that gave the genre its name.

If you're curious where that aesthetic has taken Faust after all these decades, the answer is it's given the band a relaxed curiosity for trying anything.

At Columbus, Ohio's Wexner Center for the Arts - a contemporary art center/performance space on the Ohio State University campus - the current Faust line-up, on its first U.S. tour in about a decade, gave a concert both enormously friendly and constantly musically stimulating. Plus, it's not everyday you can see a band that uses a cement mixer and a wastebasket as musical instruments.

The long-haired Jean-Herve Peron, a bassist and one of the two original members in Faust, took the stage alone, right on time, with a polite "Thank You" and began with some improvisational sounds: A few trombone notes here, a tape-looped, echoed spoken recitation of  "Is this music? No, this is not music." It was short and sweet.

With that over, he introduced the others - original member and percussionist Werner "Zappi" Diermaier; guitarist (and Thurston Moore look-alike) James Johnston, who has played with Lydia Lunch and Nick Cave; and singer/synth player/poet Geraldine Swayne, who offers elements of Sally Timms and Patti Smith in her relaxed, art-conscious performance.

Together, they played songs old ("So Far," "Jennifer") and new ("Fresh Air," about Tokyo). Singing in French - Peron's native language - as well as English and (maybe) German, they constantly encouraged close listening. There were controlled guitar freakouts where Johnston, his back often to the crowd, played into his amps to get a textured, uncontrolled noise. There were also times when Swayne, center stage, might chant in French or recite a poem to Buddha or a monologue about an old "English Woman" who saw her paintings. And Peron often picked up acoustic guitar for a gentle passage. There was fairly minimal visual accompaniment, although scenes from Murnau's silent-era "Faust" played at one point.

There were plenty of times where the various elements collided and coalesced. In one of Faust's prettiest songs, "Jennifer," a ballad begin as a duet between Peron and Swayne, there was somehow an instrumental detour that involved Diermaier taking an electric sander to a long, thin metal sheet and letting the resultant sparks fly where they may.

On "So Far" (I think, I'm relying on the band's scrawled playlist for song order), Peron not only sang in French and played trumpet, but he also held the microphone to a churning cement mixer for a solo. And, for variation, he shook a wastebasket over it, letting some particles appear to fall. Swayne added a solo on a small squeezebox that appeared to make no sound whatsoever. Yet, the effect wasn't pretentiously dadaesque - it all seemed to fit into the context of recognizable song structure.

And it was fun. This was not a confrontational show. Peron is friendly from the stage, describing songs and introducing performers. The crowd, which numbered around 100, was hardly a bunch of passive art--watchers, either. There was quite a bit of swaying and outright dancing, especially during the poundingly rhythmic encores "Teutonen Tango" and the wonderful "It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine."

The last combined bright, innocent  "ba-ba-ba-ba" vocals to commanding guitar work in a way that suggested Sonic Youth and Stereolab. Since the song dates back to the  Faust So Far album, from 1972, one might say Faust prefigured them. But it still sounds new. And Faust has plenty of new tricks.