FAUST IV

There were some big changes for Faust's fourth album.Faust had left Polydor records and their experimental music studio at Wumme. They had signed to Virgin records and were recording at The Manor in England. Virgin had released "The Faust Tapes" album for the price of a single as a promotional move, and the band suddenly found themselves being discussed and promoted in the British music weeklies. The sessions for "IV" are still a bone of contention for the band members even to the present day: apparently the band felt that the album was not finished, but Virgin records forced manager Uwe Nettlebeck to seize the tapes and finish mixing them with engineer Kurt Graupner for immediate release. Not a promising beginning for this disc.

But amazingly, "Faust IV" is a great listen and has influenced many of today's musicians, most notably Sonic Youth and post-punk bands like This Heat. More guitar- heavy than previous records, it kicks off with the least-commercial track, the nearly-12 minute opus "Krautrock", a snarling heap of interlocking guitar riffs and electronic roars that sounds like no other piece of music before or since. Percussion doesn't enter the track until past the halfway mark, but by that time the listener's brain has been turned to pudding by the complex snaking guitar drones. Outstanding! This album also contains "The Sad Skinhead", a track either love or hated by Faust fans. I love it personally- allegedly Faust's attempt to play reggae, it ends up sounding like an alien oompah band attempting MOR crossover. "Jennifer" starts out as a pretty ballad with melancholic keyboards, but ends up as a snarling electronic beast, fading out with a tack-piano coda. The second side continues the tradition of earlier Faust LPs, assuaging the listener with a surfeit of musical ideas and sonic tableaus running the gamut from fuzzy psychedelic jams to French psaltry with stops at Zappa-esque jazzrock and Terry Riley-like keyboard experimentation along the way. The closer, "It's A Bit Of A Pain" is a pleasant folk-rocker... up until the dentist-drill guitar cuts through the mix, juxtaposed with a pretty keyboard line and a sample of a woman's voice speaking French. A phoenomenal ending. There isn't a duff cut on this album despite what Faust and many of their fans tell you. This is Faust at their most "rock" and contains more ideas in a single track than many bands come up with during an entire career!

One last thing--this is the only Faust recording from the seventies that is not available in their boxset, but it's well worth a separate purchase..