Outside the Dream Syndicate is a 1973 album by the American violinist and filmmaker Tony Conrad with the German group Faust, recorded in October 1972 at Faust’s studio in a converted farm building in Wümme. Conrad’s sustained, amplified violin drones sit over an almost unchanging pulse from bassist Jean-Hervé Péron and drummer Werner Diermaier, with synthesiser added by Rudolf Sosna; the two sides hold a single harmonic field for some fifty-three minutes.
The title points back to Conrad’s 1960s work with La Monte Young, John Cale, Angus MacLise and Marian Zazeela, a group sometimes called the Dream Syndicate, whose recordings long remained unreleased. The album was the first release on Caroline Records, linked to Virgin, drew little attention and ended up in bargain bins, until Table of the Elements reissued it on CD in the mid-1990s and Conrad and Faust went back to playing it live.