FAUST IV

Essential piece of krautrock!

In my previous reviews of "Faust Tapes" and "So Far" I was little reserved in giving stars purely because I considered that FAUST was really a hard listen and an acquired taste so as to recommend it just like that to anyone seemed to me a bit careless. "Faust IV" on the other hand is the closest they got to "conventional" progressive or experimental rock and IMO it thus can be measured by these standards.

FAUST is probably the typical krautrock band and among their albums I would pick "Faust IV" (and surely the first "clear vinyl"). Not only because of the symbolical level (the opening track is titled "Krautrock"), but because it is a perfect example of a "polished krautrock avant garde", somewhat near to standard rock canons. Other three albums are way too radical to be easily appreciated, without knowing some basic theory of avant garde art. The sleeve design with empty musical notes sheet suggests another tapes- type "music concrete" odds and ends, but...

"Krautrock" is a masterpiece of electronic noise. "The Sad Skinhead" is a silly "pop" tune which recklessly stole the typical ska/new wave rhythm from the whole 1980-81 era. Shame on you guys! "Jennifer" is a mind-blowing psyche "ballad" with pulsating bass drone and impressionist minimalist lyrics. "Just a Second" offers a short trip to heavy acid rock, while "Picnic on a Frozen River" is an extension of the same synth theme from "So Far". "It's a Bit of Pain" seems to calm down at the end with a acoustic folky melody, alas not farther than few seconds when a guitar-drill-saw jumps in to cut and slice everything into pieces. Just to remind you this was still FAUST!

Thumbs up!

This is the Faust album that divides opinion like no other - to some (notably Julian Cope in his book on Krautrock) it's their lost masterpiece, to others it's their weakest moment. Having been signed to Virgin, they found themselves for the first time recording away from their notorious Wumme studios and the remarkable artistic freedom of those early years was drastically curtailed. When the recording budget ran out (a frequent occurrence in their anarchic career) the record company took what was in the can and released it, the work of a severely disgruntled band, to an apathetic public. it would be 20 years before they released another studio album, though they continued making music, and reissues and previously unreleased items appeared throughout the 80s.

What we're left with is neither a lost masterpiece nor a disaster. Perhaps the best way to think of this album is as an unfinished piece of work, which is certainly how the band themselves saw it. The album opens with the swirling electronica of Krautrock, which sounds like the Velvet Underground mangling Fur Immer by Neu!. Good stuff, especially when the drums kick in round about the 6 minute mark, but compared with Munic A and Munic B from 71 Minutes of... it sounds rather thin - this is a track which was released without Faust's legendary studio wizardry being applied in post production, and it shows. The Sad Skinhead is a light hearted attempt to replicate the neolithic bootboy stomp of It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl which has some good ideas - shambolic reggae backbeat, possibly the world's first example of ska marimba, ahead of its time new wave guitar - but it would have been better off as a b side or a bonus track. Things pick up considerably with Jennifer, a rambling piece which recalls So Far and which shares that albums dream logic - the song gradually detours into a honky tonk piano solo that appears to have wandered in from another album altogether. Just A Second sees the band again firing on all cylinders, a brief but potent instrumental piece of krautrock madness. Picnic on a Frozen River reworks a theme from So Far and combines it with Giggy Smile, which can be heard to far greater effect on 71 Minutes of.. as Party 6. While this track has its moments, it soon descends into the kind of loose jam session that the band would have surgically mutilated into something more interesting given the chance. Lauft.. is another piece which gives the impression of being properly finished (and which is mistitled as Giggy Smile on the Virgin album) with a hypnotic dub reggae harmonica weaving through the deceptively simple arrangement. An alternative but equally good take can be found on 71 Minutes of... under the title Psalter. This is followed by a meandering piece of electronic noodling before the brilliant It's a Bit of Pain rounds things off in vintage Faust fashion, swinging from laid back to blood curdling in the twinkling of an eye and showing that they still had some bite.

Whilst it's certainly their most accessible release, Faust IV is not the overlooked classic it's sometimes made out to be. It's a good introduction to the band, particularly in the UK where it's a mid price release, but it pales in comparison with other material from the same period. Many of the tracks, and their alternate versions, can be heard on their excellent website, should you wish to make the comparison.

This album had a great impact on generations of musicians to come, still fresh and original...but sorry, once again it's not their best and just a passable effort if we compare it to their grandiose BBC sessions or 71 minutes Faust. Tracks here are a bit puerile and too orientated to humorous post-rock collages, funny sketches. The good point is the variety of recordings, alternating with consistence pre-ambient songs, experimental pop / rock attempts and nervous kraut-hymns. This one also sounds more commercial, consequently it can easily seduces the more reluctant of us toward "weird" krautrock experimentations. The opening "tune" krautrock is an eccentric, noisy & dirty rock song with fuzz, electronic treatments. "The sad Skinhead" and "Jennifer" are funny pop songs with a nice groovy felt, but just boring for those who love the experimental side of the band. "Just a second" is an efficient "garage" pysch-guitar composition, my favourite here...Faust IV is not perfect but remains a sweet collection of flashy post-rock songs. A necessary purchase for fans.

Easily, my favorite Krautrock album. "Faust IV" manages to be both experimental and engaging, but accessible enough to draw you in, even at its outer limits. This was Faust's last album of the early period, and their label had insisted they go more commercial. This work is definitely easier on the ear than some of their other work (notable "Faust Tapes" ('73)), but is still exciting. Faust has written this off as not essentially 'them' and it is not included in their boxset. Despite their complaints, its still a great album.

The droning "Krautrock" which begins the album, is one of the best pieces of the type of music I have heard, reminiscent of NEU!'s motorik sound. It can drag on the first few listens, but is an excellently crafted piece of drowning, electronic music. It basically sums up Krautrock, as it titles suggests, for me. (When the drums come in at 7:09, yes that late, it is a monumental moment in such a sparse piece, but Faust pulls it off). "The Sad Skinhead" shows Faust's irrepressible humor, with their attempt at Reggae, with a German spin. (There is no lost irony in the fact that skinheads did in fact like Reggae music and ska despite their racists leanings). The song is very prescient for 1974 of music to come. Without a doubt, "Jennifer", with its simple, repetitive lyric, throbbing amped up bass-line, cacophonous electronics mid way through and acoustic 'saloon' piano closing is the album's masterpiece. "Just a Second" begins like a standard hard rocker, and knowing Faust, soon turns into more synthesizer play, imitating the sounds of a burbling river before returning to the rock. "Picnic on a Frozen River" starts off with an annoying, though catchy rock melody, before descending into improvisation with excellent Sax work. The band really synergizes on this piece, but it feels incomplete or under worked. "Giggy Smile" shows off Faust's large folk inflections, and very accessibly for this band. "Lauft...Heisst..." isn't much of anything, just some synths gathering volume and dying down, it serves as an interlude, or filler, or both, but is definitely overlong at three minutes. "It's a Bit of Pain" is an unexpected finish to the album, bordering on country music. The french language female vocals bother me in the middle, but that's just me. It's a good, tune, with its dreamy, ambling tempo and heavily distorted guitar solo at the end. A quirky finish to an equally quirky album.

Most kraut fans will already have this, so no need recommending it to them. Though not as groundbreaking as their earlier work, its a hell of a lot more listenable. Recommended as a good way to ease into Krautrock, before tackling more challenging works like Can or early Tangerine Dream.

4/5 Stars = Excellent album, though not essential to prog music, and a lot of prog fans won't like this. (R. Katzwer, 12/30/05)

Of all the Krautrock bands, Faust is perhaps the most diverse and likely to surprise. You never quite know what you're going to get. Well, on Faust IV, you get just about everything! The opening 11 minute track, appropriately titled "Krautrock" seems to be a parody of Neu! and their long droning motorik style, but even if it is meant as a jest, it works very well on its own. Then you've got reggae (The Sad Skinhead) and the gorgeous dream-pop of "Jennifer," a song so influential that you'll hear an homage to it on the Eurythmics breakthrough album "Sweet Dreams are Made of This." The wonderful thing about Faust is that they never took themselves too seriously, and there's always a bit of humor present in even their most experimental works. Given its diversity, Faust IV wouldn't be a bad place to start if you're a Krautrock beginner, and it's definitely an album you should have if you're already a fan of the style.

FAUST were one of the most radical and experimental bands you'll ever hear. I'm shocked that Virgin Records actually signed them to a contract (haha). Compared to their first two albums though I suppose this is less experimental but far from being accessible.

The first song called "Krautrock" is a great way to start with the electronics droning along with that hypnotic beat with guitar being repeated over and over. Drums to the fore 7 minutes in. "The Sad Skinhead" has a reggae beat after the yelling that opens the song. There are funny lyrics about being a skinhead like "Going places, smashing faces, what else could we do." Ok, maybe they're not that funny (haha). "Jennifer" is a reserved song with laid back vocals 2 minutes in. It gets an almost rag-time feel with the piano later, along with some experimental sounds before that. Cool track that brings some of the more recent ("In Rainbows" & "The King Of Limbs") RADIOHEAD albums to mind. So this is where they got their latest sound. The earlier stuff sounds like CAN. Just sayin'. "Just A Second (Starts Like That !)" has a nice heavy sound with some good guitar. Then some experimental sounds take over before 2 minutes. "Picnic On A Frozen River, Deauxieme Tableaux" is catchy with sax 2 1/2 minutes in that goes on and on. Guitar after 4 minutes as the pace picks up. Great tune. "Giggy Smile" has the sounds of people talking to open as acoustic guitar comes in. This is really good. Almost spoken vocals come in. Experimental sounds follow. The next song (7) has no melody just different spacey sounds. "It's A Bit Of A Pain" features acoustic guitar, keys and vocals before we get some experimental noises (surprise) that come and go. Some female spoken words and aggressive guitar.

As much as this album is more polished than their first two albums, it's the experimental sounds that have never changed with this band. I guess this is their signature sort of speak. For the adventerous.

"Faust IV" is as the title suggests the 4th full-length studio album by German Krautrock act Faust and the group´s 2nd album released through Virgin Records. The album was released in September 1973.

After the wild experiments on the preceeding album "The Faust Tapes (1973)" Faust settled on a more conventional krautrock style on "Faust IV". The album opens with the aptly titled "Krautrock" which with it´s repetitive beats and noisy/psychadelic sounds qualifies as one of the best examples of the style. With it´s 11:47 minutes long playing time the track overstays it´s welcome a bit but it´s still a strong track. The rest of the album continues with tracks that are more or less krautrock styled (repetitive beats and psychadelic sounds) but some tracks also feature noisy electronic manipulation elements which is a trademark for Faust. The English language vocals are rather stoned sounding and mostly repetitive in nature.

The sound production is very strong, just as the case have been on all previous albums by Faust. Upon conslusion "Faust IV" is a good quality album by Faust and it´s by far their most accessible album out of the first four, but when that is said I prefer both the debut album "Faust (1971)" and the second album "So Far (1972)" over this one. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.

Faust IV is iconic, unsettling, uniquely diverse Krautrock

That iconic cover covered in parallel lines, like a barcode, appears on many prog websites and magazines and I knew eventually I would be drawn to this album by sheer curiosity. Krautrock is familiar territory in my collection with the likes of Neu! Grobschnitt, Amon Duul II and Can, but Faust take it to a whole new level. The drone of the opening track doesn't prepare you for the myriad of musical directions this album takes you. It is like a journey and getting there is half the fun.

Not every track is listenable, in fact much of it is downright unsettling with bone jarring low drones and ethereal effects on synthesizer, like a horror movie soundtrack. Then there are accessible gems like the quiet contemplative 'Jennifer' and the punkified 'The Sad Skinhead'. One of the most popular is 'Giggy Smile' which is unearthly music that sounds like a bizarre mantra. The diversity is astounding and compelling, but it is extremely challenging at times, as all good Krautrock seems to be. There are hypnotic motifs, psych rock mantras and what is termed "musique concrete" made up of repetition and minimalism that is essentially the musical expressionism of Faust. The industrial techno rock of modern day owes much to this sound.

Occasionally I am reminded of the improv of Soft Machine meets early Kraftwerk. The music clip available of the 'Krautrock' track is introduced by Sosna stating that people laughed at the genre once and labelled it in the derogatory term it garnered, however he told the crowd that now they embrace the term as it is undisputedly German and proudly unique. Faust IV ended up naturally in the strange guide book "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die", one of the few Krautrock albums that actually made the guide along with Can's "Future Days" and "Tago Mago" respectively.

It is difficult to recommend, such is the high strangeness of the material, in fact some of this would scare unwary music listeners away from Krautrock, however this is the diversity of Kraut and Faust were unashamedly dissimilar to any other band using asymmetrical time signatures and peculiar instrumentation. Dark, compelling music that is inaccessible at times, but important in changing musical directions and defining Krautrock.

Highly-experimental and irreverent, Faust were one of the prime movers of the Krautrock scene, producing a string of engaging, eclectic and genuinely innovative albums during the early seventies that still stand up as some of the most important German recordings of the era. Originally dubbed the 'German Beatles' by unscrupulous producers hoping to make a quick buck on the hip new Krautrock genre that was impressing the British underground, Faust were anything but, with the fiercely avant-garde approach of their self-titled debut a million miles away from The Beatles pop sound, exposing (once again) the utter ignorance of those in control of the record company purse strings back in 1970. However, despite the mis-judged attempt to bracket Faust as a pop act, it did garner the group a large recording budget, impressive facilities and enough promotion to give their burgeoning career a healthy kick-start which they grabbed enthusiastically with both hands. The producers who funded 'Faust' may have been horrified by the thoroughly uncommercial (and expensive) concoction the five-piece had created, but they was no denying the powerful sonic statement that had been created. After the dense, hypnotic, swirling electro-rhythms of their eponymous debut and it's impressive follow-ups 'Faust So Far' and the low-budget 'The Faust Tapes', the band would tone down the rampant sound collages in favour of a slightly more commercial approach for 'Faust IV'. For anyone unfamiliar with band, 'Faust IV' was and is definitely the place to start, featuring as it does a nice balance between the discordant electronic experiments of their debut and the more tuneful, playful melodies that characterized their later works, illustrating just what a creative group Faust were when on top form. A carefully-constructed and quietly-enthralling record, 'Faust IV' opens with the layered, droning, 11-minute-long haze of the simply-titled 'Krautrock', a track that ebbs and flows as naturally as breathing, slipping delicately from one mesmerising section to the next. As the last embers of 'Krautrock' slip away, the jocular cod-reggae fusion of 'The Sad Skinhead' ripples into life, showcasing the band's lighter side and penchant for simple, overlapping rhythms. These two tracks, alongside the catchy, softly-sung 'Jennifer' and the imperious 'Giggy Smile' are the undoubted highlights. However, unlike their previous efforts, 'Faust IV' becomes, after repeated listens, one of those indispensable albums that can always be listened to all the way through, with the seriousness of the the music's experimental nature undercut by the group's light touch and inventive playing. Alongside the likes of Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Amon Duul II, Harmonia, Neu!, Can and Embryo, Faust are one of the major Krautrock acts whose influence has grown over the prevailing decades, with 'Faust IV' a cornerstone of the electronic side of the genre. Both Avant-garde yet playful and sassy, 'Faust IV' is a remarkable album. STEFAN TURNER, LONDON, 2010

Push play and take the short route to the dizzying heights of Krautrock perfection.

With a warped electronic whiplash you're suddenly drenched by a surging, pulsing drone of the most wondrous richness and majesty. A shining, rather warm mishmash of fuzzy, unpolished synth sounds dance and shimmer in layer upon layer, mixed with deeper, bassier murmurings lurking in the background together with shorter, more playful (and ocassionally more abrasive) phrasings that haphazardly pop in and out of the mix. After a while a hypnotic tambourine-like beat anchors the piece while mischievous distorted guitars wink, blink and glitch by like quick and sudden electrical impulses. The bass build on the beat with a mantra-like repetitive zeal with room for discreet but delicious changes. Guitars evolve into denser, more textural sounds and mingle with the keys in ever more intense, loose and multi-layered tapestries of fragile harmonies and noise before - suddenly - the drums build up as for a crescendo with a proper beat and some power around the seven minute mark. But nothing really changes, at least not drastically. Guitars break free from the instrumental hive-mind and start to form floaty and more melodic structures that dominate the now airier soundscape for a while. It gets a bit ominous and hesitant right about here, where nervous, chaotic electronic sounds swoosh past or hover threateningly before dissipating. A final flutter of cymbals and the fading last remnants of the guitars...and it's all over. Just like that. Not with a bang, but with a whisper. Et cetera.

The contrast to what follows is what breaks and makes this album. The Sad Skinhead is a groovy, off-beat-laden pop rock ditty with a scaled down and roomy arrangement of drums, bass and guitar. Basic, primal, naked. Some eager marimba fill out the spaces along with hints of the previous electronica and eventually makes this song more interesting than when taken at face value.

This intrinsic conflict on Faust IV is ever present on all the remaining tracks. A slightly lazy and curious love for easy-going pop and rock that makes me think of Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers and The Velvet Underground. Love, yes, but also a flippant, humorous detachment and a whimsical dismissal of it all. That same undeniable but mesmerizing friction with harsher structural and sonic experimentation you can encounter in their work. But Faust are even less focused. You get a feeling that the band felt bored with the compositions while they were still being composed. Add to this an almost punky spirit of DIY and a streak of simplicity and you end up with an intriguing and special end result.

Clear and roomy production and a pulsing, repetitive nature in both melody and rhythm is inherent to many of the tracks, but like on the epic Krautrock, things are left to evolve rather freely from this basic underlying pattern. Be it the dreamy pop-drone of Jennifer with hypnotic, throbbing bass sounds up front, the heavy, driving psych of Just A Second, a cheery, rollicking, Canterbury-esque pseudo-jazz theme in Giggy Smile, the Can-channelling, faux-chanson Lauft or the delicate and folky psych-pop of It's A Pain - all of them evolve into stranger, more convoluted territories as they run their course. Twisting sheets of chafing, hissing electronics and guitars. Watery and percussive oscillations over dark and aimless meanderings from guitar and piano. Loose, jam-like jazz section with extended saxophone solo. Near-mechanical noise. Freaky, clicking percussion and classical, string-infused guitar that dies off into minimalistic, proto-ambient. Sharp and atonal sound manipulation and distortion blurted all over places it doesn't belong.

All of these disparate parts are juxtaposed and jumbled as if it's the most natural thing in the world. There are no clear boundaries between what's a song and what's an experiment or between what's a composition and what's an improvisation. Everything merges. It makes Faust IV disjointed and fractured, but also very playful and inviting for anyone willing to explore this strange little world. It's a carefree, loosely held together mess with normal quality control and standards thrown out the window. But it still holds up as a thoroughly enjoyable collection of music.

Wonderful.

4 stars.

//LinusW

Faust IV is an album which veers giddily between two distinct styles. On the one hand, you have a quirky style of highly avant-garde krautrock that must surely have fed into the Henry Cow sound (in fact, Henry Cow's early sound can be summed up as a mashup of the more avant ends of Canterbury and Faust-styled Krautrock - a heady mixture which could have only come about at Virgin). On the other hand, you have whimsical, comedic songs which remind me an awful lot of the work of Kevin Ayers (see The Sad Skinhead, for instance). In other words, it's a mashup of a big heap of prog traditions which were overlooked by the mainstream even when prog itself was mainstream.

After the release of The Faust Tapes, and a new English audience for Faust to show their music off too, the band would go into a more mature mindset for their next, and last outing in their current line-up before the release of Rien in 1994. Faust, as a result, would loosen up on their avant-garde mentalities, and go to more toothsome elements. This would, in-turn, create Faust IV, which is some to be the band's best and most iconic record to date, and those claims I find to be most serviceable.

This album takes a heavy focus more on rock aspects rather than drone, musique concrète, collages, and field recordings. This results in probably the band's most mainstream effort to date, though, even then, Faust's mainstream appeal is extremely niche at best as this is still as avant as one can get.

For me, I find this album to be some of the best krautrock there is in the early bit of the 1970s. Tracks like Krautrock, Just A Second, and Giggy Smile resonate with me with their fun and bouncy jams that feel very intimate, almost like it is some sort of mating ritual between the instruments. The slower songs like Lauft...Heisst Das Es Lauft Oder Es Kommt Bald..Lauft, It's A Bit Of A Pain, and especially Jennifer are also really excellent to me as they break the tension between the savory jams for lighter works of art.

Speaking of Jennifer, this is Faust's best track in my eyes. This track just resonates such emotion in just some few simple chord progressions as the song advances repetitive phrases, but each feeling so different from the last, making the song feel like a unique experience each time I hear it. It also feels very ahead of its time to me. It can really fit in a more, early 90s alt rock or indie rock melody that many would rave about, such as No Surprises by Radiohead or Roads by Portishead. I'd say in most cases, plenty of krautrock groups, or, just German music in general were really ahead of their time, and Faust creating a very soft, depressing, but very astute song such as Jennifer when their catalog is mostly drone pieces, jams, and plenty of avant garde pieces really says a lot about the band's tenacity to create something truly unique.

While I do think this is the band's magnum opus, I always find that status really only goes to the first side of the album as side B feels a little less grand, and even a bit forgettable. While I can go into great lengths for my love of Krautrock, The Sad Skinhead, and Jennifer, the side B tracks of Giggy Smile, Läuft... Heisst das es läuft oder es kommt bald... Läuft, Run, and It's A Bit Of A Pain always left my mind as iconic tracks from this album. It isn't that they are bad, just really not as memorable as the songs before them in my humble opinion.

I will also point out that some of the repetition on these songs just never works out all that well in some cases. For slower songs like Jennifer it certainly does, but the more jammy songs here I feel deserve some variations of different riffs instead of repetition, especially for Krautrock. I think Krautrock could be so much more amazing if the band just did more with its riffs. In my mind, this makes the album feel a tad stale at times.

All that said, Faust IV is still an excellent display of krautrock soundscapes for Faust to explore, but with a more rock taboo that allows the group to fully embrace their more jammy nature and create some fantastic works. While this may not be my favorite Faust record, I can absolutely see why it is for a ton of people. It is just a great record all around, and one that I think can be essential for those looking for more krautrock in their lives.