Hey Faust fans!

[Fortunate One]

So, fellow Very Good-ers, I don't mind admitting I finally got 'Fausted' the other night. I refer of course to the early 70s German band Faust and
the album that really got under my skin was Faust lV. Wow! What an amazing album...from the opening nano-second of noise of the first track to
the last with all points in between I was smitten. How did this manage to stay under my radar for so long? The bigger question though is: What else
of theirs am I missing (surely it can't top 'lV')? What of the reformed 80's Faust? Any good or just going through the motions? Who are Faust anyway?
And why break up after such a great LP? (So many questions I know).

[bradx]

IV probably isn't the best but it is very good and has actually got better with age.
The first 3 are even better (Faust, So Far and The Faust Tapes).
The posthumous Munic & Elsewhere is a masteriece too.
The Last LP companion - a slight notch down but still essential.

After that they disppeared.
They re-appeared in the 90s. The post-95 stuff is not that appealing to me.

imo it was Rudolf Sosna who provided the humour, warmth, charm and melodies of Faust. Unfortunately he drank himself to death.
Without Rudolf they were 'just another' noise band from Wümme.

I envy you... gettin all that great stuff to listen to

[effi_deep]

faust IV is probably my favorite, followed by faust tapes.
still have troubles getting into the first two...

[Fortunate One]

Agh, excellent mein freund! Much needed added info, Brad...thankyou! To know this is just the tip of a smallish iceberg is great news indeed. I'll track down said
items (hopefully) and report back as soon as poss!

[Fortunate One]

Cheers Effi,
the 'Tapes' looks like it's next on the listening list then. I had it and let it go just last year for some reason. Seeing as it sold it vast numbers at the time
should not be impossible to find again me thinks(?)

[Xann]

iirc The band wasn't too pleased with IV as Nettelbeck, the non musician, mixed it whilst the rest of the band weren't there.

Virgin released a two disk version of IV with the full version of 'Just A Second (Starts Like That)' - Which I'd always wanted more of.

Love it though. It and the 'Tapes' have been about my favourite albums for a quarter of a century.

imo it was Rudolf Sosna who provided the humour, warmth, charm and melodies of Faust.

Aye, though Peron provided some of the lighter moments too - The last two tracks on the 'Tapes' are both Peron.

Agreed on the later stuff too, though quite like this.

[Cacapo]

I don't mind admitting I finally got 'Fausted' the other night.

Congrats. Maybe check out the first couple of Neu! albums too, if you havent already.
I like this from "So Far" but I tend to skip the more experiemental things . Never got into the debut. Probably because of the gimmicky packaging. I always thought it was a bit pretentious.

[bradx]

IV seemed to be a disappointment when it first came out. This might have been because the first 2 were so creatively packaged.
Now though IV really can be heard as a timeless collection of experimental yet accessible avant 'rock'.
The 2CD version is the one to get ... and is now indispensable, I completely agree.

Funny - if I had to pick just one Faust record I would go for the first one. It's one of those albums that I've listened to for nearly 40 years and still haven't really got to grips with it.
It's slippery... always out of reach to me. In my own mind I link it to such other uncategorisable albums like Third Reich n Roll and Half Machine Lip Moves ... they always sound different each time I listen, even though I have listened many hundreds of times.

Yes, quite right - Peron did supply crucial 'catchy' moments. I forgot that

I also play and enjoy the Tony Conrad & Faust 'Outside the Dream Syndicate' monolith. This is an impenetrably grinding and remorseless 2-sided slab of unstoppable one-beat rigidity that exists in its own time-world.
I saw Faust perform this in 94 in London and it was a fairly extreme occasion

[treeboy]

That little snippet of Dr Schwitters on Faust Tapes is simply one of the best bits of music I've ever heard. The fact it is a small segment of a longer piece only adds to its enigma as a small jewell like creation, which works perfectly. Special record.

[amidar]

One of my favourite all time bands if you can stand it 'Faust Tapes' is my favourite (scary, beautiful, bonkers, nothing else like it) or the later comp '71 minutes of' ('eat that fruit but don't take root' is a great lyric). I also liked the more recent 'Patchwork' which was a faust tapes like edit of older stuff only on cd I think oh and can never forget 'clear faust' as I've always known it as. I love 'so far' and 'iv' but always considered those as the albums the record companies were reigning them in on although the genius of 'a bit of a pain' on 'iv' cannot be underestimated, sometimes restriction is a good thing as there are some classy tunes on those albums.

On the subject of 'Dr Scwitter' as treeboy mentions if its the track I am thinking of on 'tapes' my mate always said it reminded him of bombs having fallen in a world war 2 blitz and looking around at all that devestation. Its hard with 'tapes' without a tracklist as such.
Edit: no I was wrong the piece I'm thinking of is at 17:30 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrnBIMJhvnA The drumming on the previous track is also genius.

Once you get that 'Faust' are all about fun and experimentation and making music with anything and everything you start to get it and enjoy their bonkersness, we used to freak out people all the time playing 'faust tapes' when they were stoned or otherwise intoxicated it can quite a scary experience. I always wanted to be the guy who played the little buzzy synth noise in 'J'ai Mal Aux Dents' on 'tapes' that changes in duration every time he presses the key and tweaks the envelope filter or whatever (although that whole song is genius right down to how the vocal changes and is rephrased throughout). Listen again you'll know what I mean. Its little things like that and the phasing from left to right of the vocal of 'flashback Caruso' (tapes' is like half an album played in mono, so many stereo effects!) that make 'Faust' one of the greatest bands ever!

Oh and I've always hated 'Jim Kerr' for flinging his copy of 'tapes' off a high rise, nobhead.

[amidar]

IV seemed to be a disappointment when it first came out. This might have been because the first 2 were so creatively packaged.
Now though IV really can be heard as a timeless collection of experimental yet accessible avant 'rock'.
The 2CD version is the one to get ... and is now indispensable, I completely agree.

Funny - if I had to pick just one Faust record I would go for the first one. It's one of those albums that I've listened to for nearly 40 years and still haven't really got to grips with it.
It's slippery... always out of reach to me. In my own mind I link it to such other uncategorisable albums like Third Reich n Roll and Half Machine Lip Moves ... they always sound different each time I listen, even though I have listened many hundreds of times.

Yes, quite right - Peron did supply crucial 'catchy' moments. I forgot that

I also play and enjoy the Tony Conrad & Faust 'Outside the Dream Syndicate' monolith. This is an impenetrably grinding and remorseless 2-sided slab of unstoppable one-beat rigidity that exists in its own time-world.
I saw Faust perform this in 94 in London and it was a fairly extreme occasion

I was at that gig, with the white curtain and giant shadow! I remember the drummer having his brow mopped by a fellow band member and seemingly calmed down afterwards (not surprised playing that same 2 beat for half an hour). AMM were great that night also they had some weird machine that as he stroked a fret board with a metal tube it phased through shortwave radio stations, fascinating. Probably the artiest gig I've ever attended! I probably shouldn't have taken amphetamines though.

[treeboy]

This bit Amidar

A favourite from the hazy daze. This one too

[amidar]

Ah, you're right lovely piece of music. I love 'Jennifer' with its heartbeat bass line, great on a decent stereo set up.

[treeboy]

Somewhere in What Goes On by Velvet Underground there's a wormhole which leads to a place where this is going on

I don't get a lot of the new space rocky "psychedelic" bands....But I get this...turn the drill up my old son...and why isn't the front row going bonkers?

[Xann]

...we used to freak out people all the time playing 'faust tapes' when they were stoned or otherwise intoxicated it can quite a scary experience.

Ha ha ha - The initiation into our teenage group of friends comprised of a bucket, then Faust.

This was until the night we had to call an ambulance.

He was ok in the end. The ambulance arrived without the police, and my mate's mum upstairs slept through the whole thing.

Better than nobbing a dead pig