SO FAR

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Faust's second album is probably the best possible entry point to Faust's incredibly bizarre sonic world, So Far being the most accessible for uninitiated outsiders. Among all of the Krautrock movement that include so very bizarre group (like Kraftwerk, K/Cluster, Can), Faust was probably tops in the

Starting on the lengthy and binary Rainy Day (one of their longuest-lasting song in their live repertoire), this very minimalist piece gets most people to wonder WTF, but further down once the sax comes in, the "song" takes a more normal turn since there is a semblance of a melody. A shorter acoustic guitar piece Abamäe makes a welcome interlude to another lengthy repetitive track, JH Peron's No Harm. While repetitive and minimalist, the song is much more interesting than Rainy Day, while the highlight of the album, the title track has the same repetitive quality, but here it becomes hypnotic with great horn sounds and some space whispers.

Mama is blue is weirder tracks were the music become more concrete and comes with unbelievable noises that came to make music. The following I Got My Car & TV is a stooped spoof track at first but turns out to be their most virtuosity-minded track. Two short spoof tracks like Picnic, Space and Spirit are just more insanity bordering some ragtime jazz (the piano mostly) crossed with swing jazz (trumpet ala Louis Armstrong).

Best used as an introduction of Faust, this album iwill be only a warning to Faust's weird world, but it will not prepare you for some of the shocks the other albums will give you. In the meantime, So Far remains the only Faust album I return to every second year or so.

I don`t know if it`s fair to write a review about an album that I heard almost 20 years ago. But I`m writing this. In 1985 I was playing in a band which had 8 members (!), and the keyboard player, who is still playing in bands since then, lent me several albums of some bands/artists: Return to Forever, Vangelis, Banco, Peter Gabriel, Faust, The Dregs, and other albums that I don`t remember now.I liked some of those albums and I recorded them in cassettes, and I recorded some songs of the albums that I didn`t like very much in one cassette only. FAUST was one of the bands that I didn`t like very much. I still have the cassette where I recorded the only song which I liked from this "So Far" album: "On the Way to Abamäe", which is an instrumental piece with an acoustic guitar or classical guitar, in the style of Steve Howe or Steve Hackett, with an organ in the background. It is a sad song but it is very good. I remember that the rest of the music in this album is noisy, sometimes funny, with some funny lyrics, but not very interesting musically.Maybe the best memory that I have from this album is the cover design: it had the black cover which is included in this website, but it also had a booklet which included the lyrics and some good paintings that illustrated each song. I think that the record I heard was a re- issue of this album which was released by a British label called Recommended Records or something like that. "So Far" is only for the fans of FAUST and this kind of music called Krautrock.

A poor album by a magical musical tribe...sorry but here the alchimy dosen't work. Very far from the classic and powerful post-experimental pieces of Faust, BBC sessions and few others. It's a kind of concept album, with short pop, noisy and weird compositions. Too many vocals and structured songs here. There is however some nice uses of electronic and sound tape manipulations...but well if you don't want to waste your money and your time just pass the way and run on BBC sessions!!!

More accessible than the famous "clear" debut, "Faust So Far" is probably the best place to start for those unexperienced but daring and brave warriors who are prepared to face the music! Do not expect anything conventional about FAUST and be prepared for everything! "It's a Rainy Day" is a good choice for exemplary download from here, so you can test your ears and nerves. This type of "music" is hard to rate, because it falls outside the conventional prog music and even music in general. It is definitely not an excellent addition to any prog collection, since a typical prog fan would probably go fine without it. But it is also not a merely collectors/fans only category, since I would really recommend to any devout progger to give it a listen: you don't loose anything, but you may gain a worthwhile insight into the most avant-garde of the Krautrock. The choice is yours! "Daddy take a banana, tomorrow is Sunday!"

It seems like the band made a conscious attempt to record an album that would be more accessible and easier on the ears than their first record was.This still has it's experimental with silly moments, but they've shortened the songs, and replaced the trumpet with sax. Syd Barrett would be a good reference point to some of these songs, although this has more in common with Krautrock than Psychedelic.

"It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl" has this simple, relentless beat that is joined by piano, then vocals, and finally by guitar. I like this song, it's addictive. "On The Way To Abamae" opens with some dark organ before some nice acoustic guitar and flute take over. Good tune. "No Harm" is the longest track at over 10 minutes. It opens with drums, sax and organ. The sound changes 2 minutes in as guitar, drums and sax create a nice sound. Another change 3 minutes in as the emphasis is on the drums and percussion. Vocals 4 minutes in with some great guitar and bass to follow as it gets a little crazy "So Far" opens with dissonant sounds before a good rhythm comes in with some spacey synths and sounds in the background. Good beat to this one as well.

"Mamie Is Blue" is kind of odd with the machine-like pulse. What is that ? I don't know but it sounds amazing ! Vocals 2 1/2 minutes in. "I've Got My Car And My TV" is a Barrett-like psychedelic tune with the silly lyrics and sounds, there is children singing as well. It's surprisingly catchy late. "Picnic On A Frozen River" is a catchy little number with sax, drums and keys, with the guitar coming in late. Good song. "Me Lack Space..." is experimental with sax and dark piano sounds with no real melody. I like it. "...In The Spirit" is a silly closing track with someone speaking strangely to open with freaky sounds all around. You can hear someone trying to find a radio station. It ends with bass, sax and yelling.

These guys still had lots of great ideas at this point and they aren't repeating themselves at all.

So Far is the second full-length studio album by German Krautrock/ psychadelic/ avant garde rock act Faust. The debut album Faust (1971) is a wildly experimental avant garde rock album with lots of electronic experiments and sound collages mixed with psychadelic rock sections. A very innovative and unique album IMO. This second album is very different from Faust and it could almost have been a completely different band who made it.

So Far is a much more structured album and the trademark repetitive krautrock beats are much more a part of the sound on this album than they were on the crazy debut. Compared to the difficult listening experience of the debut, So Far is much more accessible. This time around it´s audible that the band employ ordinary rock instrumentation like guitar, bass, drums, keyboards/ synth/ organ and saxophone. The vocals are mostly chanting the same lines over and over again as if they are more an instrument than actual vocals but there are more ordinary vocal parts on the album too. The album is very varied and we get repetitive krautrock tracks like It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl, So Far and No Harm ( which actually has an almost mellow symphonic prog intro), a classical inspired acoustic guitar piece in On The Way To Abamäe, the cold almost industrial sounding Mamie Is Blue as well as the last four songs on the album I've Got My Car And My TV, Picnic On A Frozen River, Me Lack Space... and ...In The Spirit which are heavily influenced by Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention IMO.

The musicianship is excellent and innovative. A really unique unit this band.

The production is excellent.

So Far is probably a much better way to enter the world of Faust than the group´s much more inaccessible debut album and newcommers to the band are adviced to begin with this one. I´m fond of both albums though and wouldn´t be happy without any of them. So Far is an excellent album fully deserving a 4 star rating.

After their accomplished expression of extravagance delivered on their debut album, the Faust combo created yet another manifestation of kraut weirdness on their sophomore release "So Far". This musical work continues on that combination of bizarre joy and rebellious humor that defines the craft of this peculiar ensemble. In this album, we have a larger number of shorter pieces, and you can also notice some nods to the mainstream roads of rock, but by no means does this mean that Faust gave up on their artistic goals of experimentation and surrealism ? mostly, what takes place in this album is a stronger focus on the elaboration of specific moods for each individual track. All in all, the group's sound bears a more robust feel, which may be perfectly due to the fact that the guitar inputs are more worked on and, subsequently, enhanced in the mix. The band's style, as a whole, has a more kaleidoscopic variety, in this way providing an unequivocal impulse to the band's eclectic disposition. 'It's a rainy day, sunshine girl' opens up the album with a joyfully poppish vibe, comfortably relying on a mechanic tribal drum pattern that serves as a sort of homage to the immediate catchiness of your regular pop song. The ostensibly silly lyrics seem to reinforce this aura, which in my mind works as a resource of parody against the pedestrian simplicity of pop music. 'On the way to Amabae' shifts to a very different area: this 2 ¾ minute long nocturne on dual acoustic guitars brings a moment of serious, ceremonious solace ? this is a lyrical facet of the band that doe not usually show. But well, things don't take too long to "go back to normal", and this is exactly what happens in 'No Harm'. This piece starts with a Gothic-like motif that states a somewhat dense motif heavily relying on the mixture of organ layers and guitar progressions. Once we get to the 3 minute mark, the track shifts to a frantic exhibition of R 'n' B-infected rock and roll with heavy-like undertones and happy psychedelia. And you really can't lose with the sort of poetry that proclaims "Daddy! Take the banana! Tomorrow is Sunday!" over and over again ? this is the sort of progressive craziness that works no one knows how. So far, this is the album's first half, and the second half starts justly with the eponymous track ? 'So far'. This piece is quite vibrant, joyful, based on a monotonous use of a jazz-rock motif punctuated by sparse horn chords and featuring a solid endeavor by the rhythm duo. The tricky presence of spacey ornaments gives it a moderately weird twist. 'Mamie is blue', despite the pop- related suspicions instilled in its title, happens to be the one with biggest leanings toward the scary side of psychedelic rock: with its menacing industrial overtones and oppressive utilization of sound effects to recycle synth and guitar effects, it provides a contrast of darkness against the easy-going vibe of the preceding number. 'I've got my car and my T.V.' retakes the happy mood of previous tracks and takes it to its most refined expression in the album: with two distinct motifs that alternate comedic ambiences and jazzy jamming, this piece is quite effective in its attempt to generate colorful, classy frivolity. With the sequence of the last three tracks we are back into Faust crazy territory: 'Picnic on a frozen river' is an exercise on minimalistic chamber, 'Me lack space?' is a snippet of radio interference and '? In the spirit' is a fake cabaret piece augmented with psychedelic effects. This is how this album ends, completing yet another picture of the definitive sonic spectrum that Faust made its own.

The second album by Germany's answer to the Mothers of Invention is the most accessible of their early (and best) efforts, and yet still wildly creative in a typically dissident Krautrock way. But it's an odd choice of title for a band with only one previous album to their credit, unless the intended message was, "So Far, we've really screwed Polydor Records, ha ha!"

Here the group made a genuine effort to manage the sometimes slapdash anarchy of their 1971 debut, but without compromising any of that album's tongue-in-cheek, anti-establishment attitude. The packaging of the original LP even reversed the cover concept of the first album in a way that reflected the music within: in this case a model of opaque artistry instead of the earlier all-transparent weirdness. (Included with the original vinyl was a lavish portfolio of artwork illustrating each song, happily intact in my own music library.)

Their collective nose-thumbing was more discreet, better crafted, and is still amusing to listeners in on the joke. That trademark dry German wit underpins the willful simplicity of the album opener, "It's a Rainy Day (Sunshine Girl)", a prototypical pop song reduced to its most basic elements: a steady beat (to say the least) and a silly lyric. Both are repeated in a robotic monotone for over seven minutes, eventually reaching a climactic mock saxophone solo that never fails to make me smile.

Even more radical (for this group) was the tasteful acoustic guitar melody of "On the Way to Abamäe". Faust was often many things, but rarely so pretty. Compare that brief interlude to the driving rock 'n' roll posturing of "No Harm", with its shouted nonsensical mantra ("Daddy, take the banana...tomorrow is Sunday!"), or to the more unsettling "Mamie is Blue", sounding like the earth-shaking footfalls of some great Teutonic behemoth lumbering across the Lower Saxony countryside.

The title track meanwhile works like a Faust playbook, opening on a drunken stumble of overlapping acoustic guitars before settling into one of the most hypnotic Krautrock grooves this side of CAN, played in a flat-footed but swinging count of seven. And the consumer parody "I've Got My Car and My TV" is the band at its iconoclastic best, complete with rinky-dink melodies, children singing (and coughing), and arguably the catchiest instrumental break ever recorded. It might have been a satirical take on the post-war Wirtschaftswunder, and was apparently good enough to merit a revisit, on the "Faust IV" album in 1974.

The balance of the disc is pure ZAPPA, ending in a Dada cabaret deconstruction blended from equal measures of pure craft and tacky pastiche.

I'm not the only ProgArchive reviewer to recognize "So Far" as the ideal port of entry for newcomers to the off-kilter universe of Faust. But I'll go a step further and award the album an unreserved five stars, for quality and longevity, and for marking an essential pit stop along the winding Krautrock autobahn.