FAUST

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

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.

You can hear it both ways: as a daring act of musical non-conformity, or just a ploy to exploit Polydor in the same way the label was no doubt using its other artists, by taking their money straight to the bank. Legend says the group wasted a generous advance of time and cash on drugs and other idle recreations, before making a late attempt at actual music-making. Once the tapes were rolling, however, all bets were off.

There may not have been a kitchen sink in their Wümme studio, but everything else was thrown into the mix, and the end result was a compelling mess of song, noise, dada absurdity, musique concrete, rock 'n' roll exuberance, and free-floating what the f*ck weirdness. Some of it almost sounds (halfway) normal, like the horn melody in between the interruptions of mind-frying cosmic radiation in "Why Don't You Eat Carrots?" or the crude but invigorating garage band jam following the silly nonsense poetry of "Meadow Meal".

But the yardstick of normality was set pretty low to begin with. The side-long assembly aptly (for Polydor) titled "Miss Fortune" sounds like a haphazard collage of leftover rehearsal tapes. And the playful arrangement of the closing narration, recorded word by separate word in alternating left and right channels, was quintessential Faust iconoclasm, like some of the best Krautrock both comic and thoughtful at the same time.

"The idea was not to copy anything going on in the Anglo-Saxon rock scene", said Uwe Nettelbeck afterward: pure Barnum & Bailey B.S. of course. But then again, Frank Zappa wasn't an Anglo-Saxon, was he? The arrival of Faust could almost be seen as the second leg of a long musical itinerary that began with Zappa in late '60s Los Angeles, continued all through Germany at the end of the decade, and eventually came full circle back to California in groups like The Residents and Chrome: two direct descendants of the patchwork Faustian method.

We can only speculate what the Polydor suits must have thought of the band's first album, when they recovered from their collective faint after first hearing it. But give the poor suckers a round of applause for their misguided zeal in signing such an unlikely act, and turning this musical lynch mob loose on an unsuspecting world.

Now I may not be the biggest fan of experimental music and it's taken years for me to appreciate FAUST but man I love this particular release. It's not as experimental, in fact a lot of this music is even catchy and CAN did come to mind several times.

"Munic / Yesterday" opens with organ and distortion then a beat and more takes over after a minute. Vocals a minute later. The guitar is getting crazy ala Karoli from CAN before 6 minutes. What a great track. The beat stops 10 minutes in as we get a calm to the end. "Don't Take Roots" features distorted guitar as these beats come in. Again this sounds amazing. Spoken words and laughter follow as the music stops. Strange sounds take over 1 1/2 minutes in then banging sounds a minute later. More spoken words and laughter. This is one crazy tune man. It kicks in again 3 1/2 minutes in. "Das Meer" has a relaxed beat with piano and vocal melodies. Cool sound. "Munic Other" has a beat with sax playing over top. Catchy stuff. It settles down around 5 1/2 minutes and changes a minute later. Nice drum work too. "Baby" is like a sixties parody. There's that Karoli- like guitar as a beat and vocals kick in. Yup this reminds me of CAN. Great track !

"Party 2" has this beat that I love as the guitar then vocals join in. Almost spoken vocals join in as well around 1 1/2 minutes. Freaking amazing ! "Party 8" is a short piece with an electronic beat and more. "Psalter" has melodic guitar then another sound joins in then the drums. It continues to build. Clapping too. Vocals before 1 1/2 minutes. It settles back before 3 1/2 minutes. Nice. "Party 5 / 25 Yellow Doors" has this noisy rhythm as the vocals join in. Crazy stuff with yelling too. Nice keyboard work after 2 minutes. "Chronmatic" has these sounds that beat and pulse as we get atmosphere too. I like it ! "Party 6" is a short piece with funny Zappa-like sound affects.

Well this is my favourite FAUST release so far and it's amazing the amount of killer material that was sitting in the vaults much like with CAN.

"Eine Neuer Tag" builds as the organ and drums standout. I like the background noise 2 1/2 minutes in. Late in the song we get this circus-like noise that is quite annoying as it blends into "Carousel # 2" where it gets louder. Yikes ! It's all great the rest of the way though. "Wir Brauchen Dich # 6" has this heavy beat and more. The guitar rips it up after 4 minutes. "Four Plus Seven Means Eleven" has this beat with noise which includes distorted guitar expressions. It turns spacey late to end it. "Take Care" has this deep atmosphere as drums crash the scene. Distant sounding vocals join in. It blends into "Spiel" where we get some crazy percusssion.

"Dr. Hansl" has a beat with vocals and experimental sounds. "Apokalypse" is catchy with guitar and vocals. The guitar lights it up before 2 1/2 minutes. Killer stuff. "D.I.G." is a top three for me. The guitar and sounds pulse. Cool sound. A change 3 minutes in as it calms down then slowly builds again. Nice. "Du Weisst Schon" has all kinds of sounds or noise(haha) depending on your viewpoint. Spoken words before 1 1/2 minutes. "Livin' Tokyo" and the final track round out the rest of my favourite three songs. This one is catchy with distant vocals. Other voices join in briefly then the focus goes back to that great sounding rhythm. "T-Electronique" has an electronic beat to start then another beat joins in. How good is this ! Spacey background synths sound excellent too.

While you pretty well know what your going to get with any given FAUST album, this one is a little different. Pounding percussion, wailing distortion and insane elctronics ? Sounds like the same old FAUST to me. You might just have to fasten your seat-belt this time that's all.

"Ausbruch Nach Rumanien" opens with samples of various sounds including horses trotting on the street. Atmosphere here too. Spoken words 1 1/2 minutes in. Dark music takes over as it trips along. A haunting calm after 7 1/2 minutes. Percussion and louder sounds follow. It's haunting again 16 minutes in. Sounds start to come and go and they get quite loud. Silence from 20 1/2 minutes straight through to 1 1/2 minutes into the next song "Verwirrung". I hate silence in an album. Anyway various sounds start to get louder before 4 minutes. A calm after 6 1/2 minutes. It's noisy again 8 minutes in then it settles as this continues throughout.

"Telepathia" opens with atmosphere then sounds start to pulsate. Silence 3 1/2 minutes in. Organ comes in before 4 minutes and builds. It settles back as other sounds start to come and go. "Kampf Der Machte" has these faint organ sounds then drums and other sounds take over around 1 1/2 minutes. The beat stops at 4 1/2 minutes as random sounds come and go to end it. "Das Unheil Breitet Sich Aus" has these banging sounds and more. A calm before 3 minutes. Guitar 4 1/2 minutes in with a beat and atmosphere to the end. "Die Entscheidung" is eventually led by pulsating noises that will lead the way.

Not a bad album but too long for what it is in my opinion. ART ZOYD did it much better.

"Hurricane" begins with yelling before we get this heavy beat with clashing cymbals. It stops after 3 minutes then kicks in again quickly. "Tenne Laufen" is a brief sample of someone running and other noises. "C Pluus" has what sounds like a faint heart-beat then a more prominant beat takes over with bass and organ. Guitar and horns after 2 1/2 minutes. Nice. The abrasive guitar after 4 minutes comes and goes. "Irons" sounds like iron pipes banging into one another. "Cendre" has this acoustic guitar that builds. Beautiful stuff. "Sixty Sixty" has strummed guitar and spoken words then percussion joins in. Cool sound. "Winds" is another short piece with banging sounds and a disturbing atmosphere. "Liebeswahen" opens with percussion and cymbals as the guitar joins in then experimental sounds. Insanity 2 1/2 minutes in ! Keyboards too. Nasty !

"Elektron" has this high pitched noise that pretty much blew out my left ear-drum. It does stop but the pain continues. Pulsating sounds take over to end it. "Ella" has these abrasive riffs then a cool sounding beat takes over a minute in. "Men From The Moon" sounds like a music box at first then the vocals join in with a beat. This is almost Kevin Ayers-like. Horns then operatic vocals too. "Der Pfad" is keys and a beat before the horns come blasting in. "Noizes From Pythagoras" is again short with atmosphere and what sounds like a typewriter. "Na Sowas" opens with drums and noise. It does settle back as we get some yelling thrown in at times. A calm before 5 minutes. A beat with vocals starts to rise up. A deep noise before 9 minutes as the beat with vocals stops. "L'oiseau" has a beautiful atmosphere as the keys join in. "Huttonfreak" is a short vocal expression piece. "Teutonen Tango" is spoken words at first then a beat with noise joins in. Vocals are yelling at times. There's two of them as well.

Well if you know FAUST you'll know what to expect. Another challenging and innovative recording.

Putting Faust on the HI-FI, I dont think you have to tell the bitch to go home, she will ! Faust will make the bitch go.

Anyway 'Tell The Bitch To Go Home' is the opener title, post punk, minimalistic, garage, instrumental rock track, with an intense level of noise, hard, uncompromising, yet catchy.

After that, the album becomes less aggressive, less rock, mixtures of endless sounds, rhythm, and noise. In a brutal, dirty production. Krautish Industrial Space Rock. No clear melodic structure appears in most of the sections, this is def. avantgarde music. Spoken words ads to the drama, strange, scary, but interesting and beautiful at the same time. On Track 5, 'Lost The Signal' second major change appears. English multi artist Geraldine Swayne sings a fine vocal, on a long, more melodic track. Krautacid In a 60's early 70's tradition, not unlike what the Doors did on their longer tracks, or Velvet Underground, a bit later another shorter vocal by Geraldine appears on the album.

Experimental noise Kraut spiced with some melodic songs, and a few 'rock' tracks, Faust delivers what I was expecting on a solid album.

I am just about the biggest fan of German Krautrock legends Faust, but as I have previously stated, I think a lot of the stuff they've been churning out the past 10 years - have been stuck in the worming industrial palette as the one you encounter, when you pop on IV. I love the sound myself, but if they're aiming for a higher rating than a 3 - then advance, turn tricks or just plain change direction...

Then I bumped into this record. Watch me eat my own words - with pleasure and sea salt. I've come across a fair deal of collaborations in my life, but this one has got to be one of the most strange and yet most fulfilling that I can think of. Damn this is some good faeces!!! Though, if we rewind things a bit, we can actually spot what seems to be the perfect combination musically. Faust were of course one of the main instigators of the industrial genre - pioneering the metallic and desolate expression before any other bands were even thinking of combining such madness within a musical barrier. Dälek on the other hand took a lot of their inspiration from the same industrial wave as Faust fathered - using beats, bits and somewhat atypical noisiness and dark misanthropic moods - intelligently weaving these cryptic ingredients into the rhymes of the main man. Yet hip hop was always that. A Frankenstein of different parts - historical pieces spanning from Mo-town to Sergio Leone flicks glued together in a weird, bouncy and flavourful concoction that made your head bump and feet stomp.

On this album - the different angles of the industrial music age converge into something quite unique and expressive. Sure it is dark and noisy, but it works like a saw in a tree.

While I gather most of the mature people out there would hate this stuff with a vengeance - I can see many of the new comers to the world of experimental music go absolutely crazy to this mind-numbingly creation. There is a lot to like here - like the laser beam electronics mixed with a slightly corrosive coating that quite simply sounds like sonic acid tunnelling its way down into your brain. Coupled up together with staccato turntable flickers and the mad dog beats of hip hop, you here face something extraordinary and urban - like a towering sonic stature of cement and gravel throwing fiery darts in your general direction.

This one is atmospheric, creepy, echoing, uncouth, bad mouthed, ill tempered, beautiful and ugly, jarring, full of beats, rhymes and an urban pulse-taking device that seems to go beyond what you'll ever read about in a magazine like The Wire. This is streets, fuel and crowbars handed over in a dirty and rough musical gift basket.