FAUST

Faust IV is a weird and wonderful album by one of Germany's weirdest, most experimental rock bands. This music truly is not for the faint of heart, and should only be approached by those who can fully appreciate weird, avant-garde music- though IV is easily the most accessible of Faust's records, as many of the songs are short and, from a format standpoint, "normal"- or, at least, as close as Faust can get to normal.

The album begins with a droning instrumental, appropriately titled "Krautrock". This is simply brain-frying, aggressive krautrock at its best. Then comes the Sad Skinhead, a short, pleasant reggae-ish piece that could be considered pretty normal by some- except for the fact that Faust isn't a reggae band. TSS proves that Faust is willing to go outside all boundaries, a trait present in many successful experimental bands. After that is the best song on the album- Jennifer, anchored by pulsing bass that seems to reverberate around one's very soul; it plays out like a relatively typical love song, fed through the weird machine that is Faust- resulting in repetitive, probably meaningless lyrics, which is not a bad thing; they really give the song a mesmerizing, cerebral feel. It eventually falls apart into a guitar crunch and some random playful messing-around. Just A Second starts as a nice krautrock piece, but after a little over a minute, some annoying watery, possibly flatulent sound effects come in. They eventually morph into some nice textural noises, as the song continues along its old path. Then is Picnic on a Frozen River, an interesting song, not quite different from the previous one, so still great- the difference is that there's lyrics, which give it a drunken party feel- it truly does feel like a jaunty, rowdy picnic! After that is the best "short" song, Giggy Smile, featuring some great guitar and indecipherable vocals- the song is quite joyful, and it seems to course through me and put me in a good mood, like an anti-No Surprises. "Läuft...Heist das Es Läuft Oder Es Kommt Bald...Läuft" is a nice ambient song, beginning with murky guitar and then synths reminiscent of Kraftwerk's Autobahn. And finally, It's a Bit of a Pain is a relaxing, country-ish song that closes the album nicely, and, in true Faust style, it ends with a Swedish woman talking about body hair. Overall, an enjoyable release by a great German band, and required listening for potential krautrock fans. Deserves and gets four stars.

I somehow feel that this album deserves a lot more praise from me. Unfortunately I don't enjoy the second side as much as the excellent first one. Why Don't You Eat Carrots is amazing to say the least, it's basically the perfect definition of the Krautrock-genre! Meadow Meal doesn't have quite as high composition-quality to it but still makes an overall positive impression. The final improvisational piece called Miss Fortune is what ruins this album for me. The track drags on for too long and doesn't really have enough interesting moments.

After saying that I still urge everyone who is interested in broadening their musical horizons to give this album a spin. Who knows, maybe you will find it a whole lot more enjoyable?

***** star songs: Why Don't You Eat Carrots (9:31)

**** star songs: Meadow Meal (8:02)

*** star songs: Miss Fortune (16:35)

An attempt at a more conventional album, So Far shows Faust trying to create more digestable 'songs' out of the sprawling noise that made up its debut. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt and the album ends up being rather uneven.

The new approach is most justified on the opener 'Its a Rainy Day...' which begins with a quick tempo, hypnotic drum beat and slowly adds piano, guitar, organ, harmonica and finally calminates with a lovely sax cresendo. The album continues with the simple classical guitar piece "Abamea' and then lurches into 'No Harm' which is an excellent jam blending the best of both new and old Faust. The title track is a nice, mellow groove great for cruising down the highway and is followed rather naturally by the hard, industrial sound of 'Mamie Is Blue'. The rest of the album however is comprised of mediocre snipets snoozable at best, skippable at worst.

Overall, So Far lacks the unity of its powerful debut and thus it is rated lower in my book. Ill admit though, if your a beginner who prefers to dip their toe in Faust's alluring waters rather than jump right in, this is the place to start.

If you 'get' Revoution 9, youll get Faust.

That's the most concise statement that can be made about this most mythical of albums. Rightly considered to be the quintessential krautrock album; it is the innovative, radical and disciplined statement that showcases the genre in its purest most distilled form. Like the skeletal hand on the jacket, this is music exposed to its core: noise, raw sound. Arbitrarily divided into a trio of tracks, it is best to view these as movements in one giant sound collage which combines dissonant rock, the spoken word and avant-garde experimentation which is really light years ahead of its time. Its greatness rests on its daring and unwillingness to compromise with what pop music was typically thought to consist of. I think its safe to say that if you realize that music can transcend the sugar-coated 3 min. sound byte you'll appreciate the profound beauty of what Faust has trying to achieve here. In that sense, all progheads can potentially admire this album.

There can be no half measures with Faust. You either get it or you don't. You either acknowledge its brilliance or treat it with disdain. I unabashedly fall in the former category.

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.

Funny, I was never big fan of noises, nonsense music, avant garde in popular way of this word (I like my nation's avant-garde music), or hypnotic music. And that's exactly what this is. But I decided long time ago to be fair, somehow. This is their roughly 40th year of existence, but it don't mean much in this kind of music. Normal prog rock can grow old, senile and commercial, as band do the same thing (except 2nd attribute), but not krautrock. So I'm not against the style itself, but I evaluate how this record sounds, what innovation it brings, melody, vocal, instrument, composition factor etc.

"Accroché à Tes Lèvres" 's best part is last minute, where more instruments starts to play. They finally show some emotions, not just monotone melody disrupted occasionally by shouts of singer. And other tracks, well, I have to say that there are ideas. "Petits Sons Appétissants" is very good, with different variety of sounds used. Yes, this is one of these one-listen, instant-reply reviews, which I write from time to time. And after all, I may be grateful and give better rate better, than I intended before (three minus or even two plus). Complique as complicated (or Czech komplikovane, which is quite same, just c=k and suffix "ane") I suppose. "Bonjour Gioacchino" is maybe repetitive, but original. No, it's just not my cup of tea (and by this I don't mean that I don't like it, I do a little bit, but I see little progress here, therefore not so prog), but still good candidate for

3(+), if you like repeating music, add 1 star

Faust IV is as the title suggests the fourth full-length studio album by German Krautrock/ Experimental/ avant garde rock act Faust and the group´s second album on Virgin Records. After the wild experiments on their previous album The Faust Tapes (1973) the band settled on a more conventional krautrock style on Faust IV.

The album opens with the aptly titled Krautrock which with its repetitive beats and noisy/ psychadelic sounds qualifies as one of the best examples of the style. With its 11:47 minutes long playing time it´s a bit too long for my taste but it´s a great track nevertheless. The rest of the album continues with songs that are more or less in the krautrock style but there´re also lots of psychadelic and noisy electronic manipulation elements which is a kind of trademark for Faust in the songs. The vocals are rather stoned and mostly repetitive. They are sung in English.

The production is fantastic as on all previous albums by Faust.

Faust IV is a good 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 rating is deserved. It´s like something is missing to make this a full 4 star album IMO.

The Faust Tapes is the third full-length studio album by German krautrock act Faust. The album was released in 1973 through Virgin Records. The album is quite the oddity as it was originally sold for the price of a single to increase the UK audiences interest in Faust. A very unconventional marketing decision to say the least. I´ve never heard of anything like this before.

After two IMO excellent albums The Faust Tapes does come as a bit of a disappointment. There are 26 tracks on the album which seque into each other to form a sort of sound collage. The kind of sound experiment that I would usually dislike and dismiss as art for art´s sake. There´s just something special about Faust though that makes even their most odd experiments stand out among similar projects by kindred acts. There are only a couple of the tracks on The Faust Tapes that I would actually catagorize as "real" songs. Songs like Flashback Caruso, J´ai Mal Aux Dents and Der Baum are examples of those. Most of the tracks on the album are odd and generally very short sound experiments though. Strange tape manipulations and effects, short pop/ rock song like sequences and several weird experiments called exercises. you can probably imagine how they sound like when they have titles like: Exercise - With Several Hands on Piano and Exercise - With Voices, Drum and Sax. Most tracks sound a bit unfinished to my ears and while many of the ideas in the songs are interesting the songs lack something to really impress me. The usual references to Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention are as evident on The Faust Tapes as they were on Faust (1971) and So Far (1972). The finished product is unfortunately not as strong as the first two albums by the band and even though I don´t know this for a fact I suspect that the material on The Faust Tapes are actually leftovers from the So Far sessions rather than new studio recordings by the band.

The production is excellent. Faust really understood how to make great sounding albums.

While this album mostly comes off as an odd experiment to me and I usually wouldn´t care much for an album such as this I actually enjoy The Faust Tapes quite a bit. It´s not excellent by any means but rather interesting and a 2.5 - 3 star rating is deserved.

4 and a half stars to "IV" this is one of my favorite albums of all time, but i have to admit isn´t perfect... Faust a mythic german kraut band, disheveled and proving that his has great musical ideas and genius that propose music for the senses, and the mind, the sounds are dense, cold, bizar and merge with that unique noisy and exquisite elegant sound...

Within the rich music feeling and taste of these 5 guys are held to be heterogeneous characters and signs of various genres that make a fine complement to make this great album... So, i have to admit this is a essential kraut album, a perfect choice to initiate in the prog world, very accesible and approachable album, complex and fun.

Faust / So Far is a compilation album by German Krautrock/ avant garde/ psychadelic rock act Faust. The album comprises of the first two albums by the band on one CD. The debut Faust (1971) and the second album by the group So Far (1972). The compilation was released on CD in 2000 through Collectors Choice.

Both albums are excellent Krautrock/ avant garde/ psychadelic rock albums. Innovative and unique. The debut album Faust is a very experimental avant garde rock album with lots of electronic sound manipulations and other weird experiments while maintaining a memorable element. So Far sees the band going in a more accessible direction with more structured songs featuring more ordinary rock instrumentation. The latter album is still an experimental album though with lots of enjoyable and intriguing elements.

This compilation is a very recommendable purchase and a great way to get access to two excellent albums on one CD by an outstanding act. 4 stars are more than deserved.