FAUST

If you broke into my house and told me one band that was a huge factor in the development of experimental, post- rock, electronic, minimalistic, shoegaze, psychedelic, and generally bizarre music; I'd first tell you to get out of my house, and two, I would have to say, Faust. Krautrock is a genre that has influenced the shape of modern music in many ways, whether it be Can's more jammy and illustrious visage or Amon Düül II's great deal of advancing improvisational music. However with Faust, many genres from post-rock, to industrial music, to even shoegaze can be traced with their albums and music, to where I can say that they pretty much are the sole creators of those musical movements. Faust has become the best Krautrock band in my opinion due to the mysteriously mystical aura that they provide in their music. Even with their last great works, they can still manage to hold their own for me with their highly adaptable experimental brand of rock music that was extremely ahead of their time. For me, once you start a Faust album, you can never put it down no matter if you like the music or not. So since their first two albums are now on streaming, I figured to review them, just for fun.

First impressions can make or break a band, and this stays true even with Faust's reputation among the Krautrock community. So how Faust went on to create their first effort, their self-titled album, they were signed to Polydor. Polydor wanted a German group that could rival the likes of The Rolling Stones and The Kinks, so it must've been a pretty weird ordeal to experience the music of Faust via demo tapes and recordings of people washing the dishes. Plus when their debut did release, the cover was transparent, and so was the vinyl, which most likely made a market out of the advent of colored records and interesting uses of album covers. So how does their debut stack up to some of their more critically acclaimed works such as Faust IV or Ravvivando? Well, I can safely say that this album is pretty good, but a prototype for the Faust we know today.

As such, their first song has made quite an interesting impression on me. Why Don't You Eat Carrot is an interesting example of a more Rock-In Opposition type of music, utilizing Avant Garde aspects such as heavy amounts of distortion, jazz, and ambiance. The main standout for this track is the use of sound collage, which is a practice similar to that of most collage art, where the artist takes scraps of something (in this case sound recordings the band took) and works them into the music or remix them to be more bizarre. This could be where the seeds were sown for the practice of sampling, chopping, and skewing, which would be highly influential in more experimental hip-hop artists like Viper, Death Grips, and especially Dälek, who has been a big fan of Faust and collaborated with them on their Derbe Respect Alder album. You can see their work paying off due to their experimental repertoire bleeding into scenes of subcultures that benefit from these styles. I cannot deny that I do like this song, I think it is a weird and fun movement that showcases the band's experimentation, but I do admit it is not their best effort. At this point, the band's sound was still in its infancy, and with that many aspects feel less refined than most. It is a fate many bands go through in their early years, so I can forgive the band for their part in it.

For what it is, though, you can hear remnants of that Faust sound, especially in Meadow Meal, which I wholeheartedly believe to be the best song off this album. It carries the same hammer and chisel that Why Don't You Eat Carrots did, but while that song made the rough draft, Meadow Meal would create the fine details that'd be implemented in future songs such as Jennifer or Du weißt schon. You can still tell that this is in the band's baby years, yet I can still see what they wanted to create. They had clear ideas, and while the executions are rough, the spirit is still there. This song is charming for me due to how rough yet so clear and focused it is. I can say for a fact that this is the band's first truly great song.

In some releases, the last song has varying levels of length. Since I am reviewing the version on Spotify, I'll be focusing on that one due to its availability to most people. The album closes off with the 16-minute epic, Miss Fortune. This is one of the few epics they have made, and closing the album off with one is quite the bold move for a band especially this early in their career, though Can do a similar thing with their first release of Monster Movie, so I cannot deny it isn't too far fetched. While the first two songs revolutionized the ways of sound and music, I think Miss Fortune does allow itself to breathe newer air into the psychedelic music of the era, which was already beginning to phase from the more pop routes of albums as Sgt Peppers and Their Satanic Majesties Request. We get elements that would later become the more jammy side of psychedelic rock and even the more melancholic side of shoegaze. All of it wrapped in with a ton of collaging, and ethereal poetry about a lady going through misfortune after misfortune, sinking deeper into depression at the very end. For me, while not their best epic, not by a long shot, still feels truly like Faust. I may think some things could've been tweaked to be less loose, but I cannot deny the appeal of early Faust, especially when I have decided to revisit their music a lot more closely than ever before.

Not my favorite Faust record, but with the seeds sown we can see aspects that modern music would employ. Faust will always be ahead of their time, creating music that is so bizarre it works in their favor. They aren't just groundbreaking, they are ground-shaping, and I love them for it. I think any of their albums must be listened to, and this is no different. While it is imperfect, and pretty flawed all around, I cannot deny the way this album can shape me and inspire others to experiment with music more closely than ever before.