Faust
Seventy One Minutes Of...
Recommended
Melody Maker, 1987 or 88
by Simon Reynolds
FAUST
Faust
So Far
Melody Maker, Nov 1992
by Simon Reynolds
Krautrock wasn't a movement, but a moment, a final thrust of the psychedelic project to gobble up every kind of music, and every kind of non-musical noise too, in order to excrete the outermost sound conceivable. But there were as many differences as affinities between the principal Krautrock players. If Can were fusion, Faust were fission. Can were into total flow; they oozed a self-irrigating flux of forms that grooved. Faust were more assembled, a concotion of jutting angles, jolting jump-cuts between genres, and jarring juxtapositions. Put simply, Can rolled, Faust rocked.
Faust's aesthetic was one of rupture and randomness. They effected bizzare shifts in tone (from portentious gravity to zany goofing off, from placid poignancy to balls-out aggro) or made oxymoronic collisions of incompatible emotions that resonated like a strange chord. On So Far (1972), Faust proceed from the spartan velvet stomp of Rainy Day through the wistful folk-rock embroidery of On The Way To Abamae to the highly frictional funk of No Harm, spitting out sparks like a rogue trash-compactor. So Far itself is a lush labyrinth of tangled tendrils, like Miles Davis jamming with the Velvet Underground while Tim Buckley handles the backing vocals.
Where So Far is at least nominally divided into nine 'songs', the earlier Faust (also known as "Clear" because of it's originally translucent polythene cover imprinted with an X-Rayed hand) consists of three long suites. each is a quilt patched together from outbursts of acid-rock hoo-ha, zany chorale, found sounds, synnth-gibberish, freeform jazz, nonsense incantations, mock-muzak, animal noises (genuine and falsified), ad infinitum. The music doesn't connect vertically (incongruous noises are built up layer by layer) or horizontally (instead of narrative, it's a string on non-sequiturs). But somehow a wonderful dream-logic imposes itself. Pure Dada again.
Anyone who's loved the last half-decade's reinvention of the guitar - the strange sonorities hewn by Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Mercury Rev, etc. - will instantly recognise Faust as a prime ancestor of 'our music'. These first-time-on-CD re-issues are essential, not just as a history lesson, but as living legacy, and as a reproach to an underachieving age. There's still so far to go.
FAUST
entry in Spin Guide to Alternative Music
by Simon Reynolds
Faust (1971;
Recommended 1979) [9]
So Far (1972;
Recommended 1979) [9]
The Faust Tapes
(1973; ReR 1990) [9]
Faust IV (1973;
Virgin 1992) [10]
71 Minutes Of...
(rec 1971-5; ReR 1990) [8]
The Faust
Concerts Vol. I (rec 1990; Table Of The Elements1994)
[3]
The Faust
Concerts Vol. II (rec. 1992; Table Of The Elements
1994) [3]
TONY CONRAD WITH
FAUST
Outside The Dream
Syndicate (1972; Table of the Elements,
1993) [6]
Because Can are
too funked-up, and Kraftwerk too synth-centric, Faust are arguably the
quintessential Krautrock unit. Not only did they have the archetypal German
anti-image (long, lank hair, greasy facial fuzz, grubby T-shirts and
loon-pants), but their first four albums are the definitive version of that
uniquely Teutonic take on Velvet Underground, Barrett-era Pink Floyd, the
Stooges and West Coast acid-rock. 'Take'?
I should have said 'take off', for these precursors are but a launching
pad for Faust to hurtle into a Beyond all their own. The crucial Kraut
ingredient in the rocket fuel is a Dada-filtered-through-drugs absurdism, which
manifested itself in surreal whimsy (lyrics like "a wonderful wooden reason",
titles like "Why Don't You Eat Carrots?") and a yen for cut-up and
collage.
The band's discography is pretty much of a
piece, which is not to say that it's homogenous--heterogeneity is Faust's
anti-essence. Mood-wise too, they're all over the place, skipping from zany to
sacramental to psychotic to jaunty in a flash, or zapping the listener with a
cluster-bomb of wildly contradictory emotions.
*Faust* consists of three long tracks, although the band's
schizo-eclecticism makes it sound like many more. Distorted drone-guitar
mantras jump-cut to studio-concocted caprices to cathedralized organ music to
idyllic lulls of plangent pastoralism.
On *So Far*, "No Harm"'s caustic wah-wah and staccato beats
impart an invocatory urgency to the idiot-chant "daddy, take the banana,
tomorrow's Sunday"; the title track is studio-warped, Martian doowop to
rival Tim Buckley's "Starsailor". *The Faust Tapes*--one long collage
track consisting of found sounds, ragged
jams, Stockhausen-like plainsong--is something like the Bible for '90s lo-fi
(Pavement, Thinking Fellers Union Local
282), and a major influence on 'ambient noir'
(Zoviet France, Nurse With Wound, LaBradford). Generally, Faust's oeuvre
has offered post-punk bands a treasure trove of pointers on how to expand
musically without bloating up prog-rock stylee.
*Faust IV* is the band's most
song-orientated and, by a slender margin,
best record. Its highlights include "Jennifer" (one of
psychedelia's eeriest and most poignant love songs), "Krautrock" (a
wall-of-noise pastiche whose Niagaran head- rush defeats its own raison d'etre)
and the fabulous mad- hornet fuzz-solo that climaxes the
third-Velvets-LP-styled "It's A Bit Of A Pain". *71 Minutes Of...* consists of the *Munic
& Elsewhere* LP and unreleased *Faust Party Three*, and is another fine
mess-celany of stuff'n'nonsense. *Outside The Dream Syndicate* saw the band
teaming up with Tony Conrad (who'd droned alongside John Cale and La Monte
Young in the Sixties) for three 20 minute plus tracks of magnificent,
metronomic monotony. The reactivated
Faust's early '90s live albums docment a pointless 'greatest hits' revue: steer
clear.
After Faust, you'll surely want to venture
further into the Krautrock hinterland; be warned, your wallet will suffer, as
this involves import reissues or highly prized/priced out- of-print originals.
Start with Neu!, who are something like Germany's Television. Combining radiant
guitars with the unsyncopated symettry of the *motorik* beat (also used by Kraftwerk)
to create an aura of restrained elation, Neu! released three superb LP's; their
late '70s reincarnation as La Dusseldorf had its moments too. Cluster were a two-man sound-lab who used
looped, effects-processed guitars to create drone-scapes more mesmeric and
tripped-out than Spacemen 3's wildest dreams; later, they went synth,
collaborated with Eno, and dwindled (together and solo) into New Age. In
between, Neu's Michael Rother hooked up with Cluster's Hans-Joachim Roedelius
and Dieter Mobius as Harmonia, for two albums' worth of euphonious sounds. Amon Duul II lay at the baroque end of the
Krautrock spectrum; imagine Led Zeppelin produced by John Cale and you'll get
some idea of the grandiose delights of their best albums *Phallus Dei*, *Dance
Of the Lemmings* and *Yeti*. As for the rest...Ash Ra Tempel's lysergic
raga-rock and Popol Vuh's pellucid, almost Gothic instrumentals can be taken
straight, but Brainticket and Guru Guru walk a precarious line between sublime
and ridiculous. (Reynolds)
FAUST
Rien
Table of the Elements
Mojo, 1995
Faust were born of
the Dada-meets-Zen-meets-LSD turmoil of the late Sixties. Their music, created
in communal conditions between bouts of nudism, primal-scream therapy and
growing their own pot, echoed the spirit of yippie play-power and Situationist
prankster politics. Drawing on inputs like the Velvet Underground, New York avant-gardists
La Monte Young and Fluxus, and electro-acoustic composer Stockhausen, Faust
created four peerless albums of post-psychedelic/proto-punk mayhem, jumpcutting
between genres and montaging mangled noise and mystical melody. By 1974 they
had disintegrated, but their legacy permeates the post-punk era, from
industrial (This Heat, Nurse With Wound, Pere Ubu, Einsturzende) to lo-fi
drone-rock (Main , Stereolab, Pavement, Dead
C).
20 years
from their last official release (the song-oriented Faust IV, their masterpiece
according to me, Julian Cope and nobody
else), Rien is the return of Faust in all their riotous, rule-defying glory.
Constructed partly from live excerpts from their 1994 reunion tour of the USA , which were
handed to experimentalist Jim O'Rourke to mess with in the studio, Rien is
graced by no songs as eerily lovely as IV's Jennifer. Instead, your ears are
greeted with a drone-fest of amp-hum and feedback-miasma, found-sounds and
mad-scat vocal gibberish; a wall-of-noise as blank and metallurgical as the
matt-grey CD booklet, whose 8 pages are devoid of any information (the credits
are instead spoken at the end of the record!). The result is a blank canvas for
the imagination; certain passages make me think of Siberia ,
of sub-zero winds rustling through telegraph wires, but each listener will
direct their own mind's eye cinematography. The closest Faust get to rock dynamics
is Track 5 (no titles!), where tense, prehensile rhythms instil a mantra-like
intensity, and a woozy trumpet is
processed so heavily it seems to buckle like wire in a furnance.
Rien is
superior to rival Krautrockers Can's own patchy 1989 comeback Rite Time. But
inevitably--given that Faust went so far, so every-which-way, the first time
around--Rien never really startles. Because the unpredictable is their
stock-in-trade, the unexpected precisely what we expect from them, the only way
Faust could have really surprised us is by recording, say, a Michael
Bolton-style collection of Motown covers. Fanatics will lap Rien up; novices
should aquire Faust, So Far, The Faust Tapes and Faust IV first.
Faust
Faust IV
H H H H H
EMI/Virgin
Faust’s
fourth album is controversial. It’s adored by some fans, abhorred by more. Perhaps “abhor” is a bit strong but… it’s definitely
regarded as watered-down compared to its immediate predecessor, The Faust Tapes (the one Virgin sold for
just 49p and which the bulk of its 100,000 purchasers found way too
wacked-out). That Dada side of Faust is less in evidence on Faust IV, but in compensation, the
melodic beauty and sheer rocking glory glimpsed on the first three albums
blossoms.
File
me under “adore”. IV, in fact, is my
favourite Faust and listening to this reissue (remastered and accompanied by a
bonus CD of alternate takes plus a 1973 Peel Session), I’m freshly
flabbergasted that anyone was ever underwhelmed. Opener “Krautrock” was intended as a parody of German kosmisch rock, but satirical intent
is blown to the winds by its 12-minute thunder-gush of distortion
and feedback. After the wonderfully
goofy skank of “The Sad Skinhead” (about a lovelorn bovver boy remembering
“going places, smashing faces” with his ex) comes “Jennifer”, a tripped-out
love song almost unequalled in the annals of psychedelia. A strange rubbery
reverbed-bassline and a gently circling guitar figure conjure a mood of spacey
and sacred serenity, which even the whimsical lyric about burning hair and
“yellow jokes” coming out of the beloved’s head can’t deflate. The alternate
take on disc two is even dreamier, as though Reality itself is wavering like
heat-haze ripples over a sun-baked highway.
The first
half of the original Side Two is where I half-see the naysayers’ point: the
high-energy grind of “Just A Second”/“Picnic on A Frozen River”/”Giggy Smile”
is fab but not that far from Groundhogs
or Guru Guru, ie. blues-rock + prog angularity + proto-punk aggression.
(The extended take of “Just A Second” on Disc 2, though, is a much more
freeform excursion into Hawkwind-like space boogie). After “Giggy” Faust IV gets sublime again with “Lauft
… Heisst Das Es Lauft Oder Es Komt Bald… Lauft,” a lovely acoustic instrumental laced with
scritchy folk fiddle that then then mutates into a Popol Vuh-ish piece for
organ that's almost oppressively majestic.
Closer “It’s A Bit of A Pain”
could be off the third Velvets album. It’s a plaintive ballad, equal parts beatific and
blue, that breaks out into a blistered fuzztone solo divebombing around your
head like a swarm of blissed-out bees.
Doubters be
damned; this is one of the greatest albums EVER.
INTERVIEW
WITH HANS JOACHIM IRMLER OF FAUST
Up until Faust IV, all the records were made at
Wumme, the converted schoolhouse in the countryside where Faust lived and
worked as a commune. But recording IV at
Virgin’s Manor Studio didn’t work out so well, right?
It
was a more commercial place than we expected. We brought our own sound engineer
and there were engineers there already, so there was some hassling. Still,
something good came out of it. The girlfriend of Mike Oldfield worked at the
Manor and she asked “can my boyfriend use some of your down time?.” We worked
at night, Oldfield worked in the day time, and that was Tubular Bells!
I was surprised to learn
that “It’s a Bit of A Pain,” an all-time Faust classic that makes a beautiful
closure for Faust IV, was actually an
earlier track tacked on because the album was never properly finished.
“Pain”
was the B-side of the single “So Far”. We wanted to do a concept song about
female emancipation. Germaine Greer’s The
Female Eunuch had just come out, and we were attracted by the idea of
women’s liberation, but felt it had gone a bit far. At that time there was also
the idea in Germany Germany
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