FAUST IV

This is the first Faust album I've ever heard. I wouldn't say that it is a very good introduction to the world of this band for two reasons. Reason number one is that this album is very different from any other Faust album, even if it is experimental (as some of us know it already, different experiments can be different in nature). Reason number two is that "Faust IV" is not freaking awesome. What is it that led me to this conclusion?

There are only a few good tracks. "Lauft ? Heisst das Es Lauft Oder Es Kommt Bald ? Lauft" is the first track I've ever heard, and my first reaction to it was "? weird. What is that?" Pretty soon I got the hang of the soft ambient (or "spacey") synthesizer parts and the menacing lump of waves on this puppy. The album's opener is also not too shabby. It is nothing but a strong wind of noise passing through time. It sounds like it was carefully arranged, the experiments on it sound pretty cool, and the track is groovy for the most part. It sounds like a piece of trash, but this is really some flipped-out piece of trash. The rest of the album is pretty much insignificant in every way except for the band's abilities to perform and fabricate nice-to-okayish experimental sounds. Of these tracks my personal favorite is "Jennifer", which features a very heavy experiment that threatens to wash you away.

In conclusion, this album is pretty good, but it does not do much in the prog rock territory, let alone in the Deutsch Avantgarde territory, compared to Faust's debut album.

Stamp: "I like it."