b o b

My big complaint about the band's first, self-titled album was that it sounded like it was as weird as it was because the band might not have been capable of making more structured, "conventional" music. This second album seems like an attempt to prove that they could make that type of music if they wanted to, although while the results bear some warped resemblance to "normal" rock of the early seventies, it's definitely an alternate reality normalcy. The main themes of the album seem to be repitition, minimalism, nonsense lyrics and Pink Floyd-style psychedelics. The opening song seems to be an attempt to push the repetivenesss of pop music to its logical extreme — the pounding beat is so regular that it's not just 4/4, it could be described as 1/1. The backing music is just a single note repeated over and over, dead on the beat. Over that there is some catchy guitar riffing and the song's title, sung over and over and over. The song "No Harm" starts out sounding like a dead ringer for the orchestrated psychedelic rock of the title track of Atom Heart Mother, the Pink Floyd album that was released a year or two before So Far. After a few minutes it loses the Floydian sound and becomes a rocking freak-out with shouted nonsense lyrics. "Mamie is Blue" is one of the most sinister sounding things I've ever heard, with those keyboards and guitars growling in the background and more nonsense lyrics. The album also includes some lighter moments. "On the Way to Abamae" is actually a quite pretty little pastoral instrumental with guitar and flute. "I've Got My Car and My TV" sounds like an attempt to parody a silly, upbeat TV theme song. "Picnic on a Frozen River" is a similarly jaunty sounding instrumental. And "...In the Spirit" ends the album with goofy showmanship. I'm still not a huge fan of the band, but I definitely enjoy So Far more than the band's self-titled debut. review by Bob Eichler — 11-8-05 —

j o e

The second album of Faust features less emphasis on the sonic collages and ever-applied studio experimentation for which the band is known. Comparatively, they tend to play out their hand on So Far, rather than a constant re-shuffling of the deck. The band members stated that there was some semblance of a musical story lurking beneath the sequencing. For example, "It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl," with its paleolithic quality, was meant to be an exhortation against the kind of music people would end up listening to given the state of popular music, and the follow-up with "On the Way to Abamäe" was meant to be an ideal. Regardless of all this, So Far still generally feels to me, more or less, like a European restatement of Velvet Underground and Mothers of Invention. While "It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl" is catchy and has a certain degree of charm to it, the steady thump-thump-thump of the drums together with tinny rhythm guitars can't help but evoke the ghost of vintage Moe Tucker and the boys. "On the Way to Abamäe" is an interesting departure from the band's usual music, essentially a classical acoustic guitar piece by Peron, who seems to have been the most technically proficient band member. With "No Harm," however, we catch the first glimpse of the usual, more unhinged side of the band, with another strangely catchy if thoroughly nonsensical chant. Providing some comic relief is "I've Got My Car and My TV," basically a Mothers-like song with the addition of a group of children on vocals; the presence of the clavinet especially recalls Absolutely Free. "Me Lack Space..." is a brief monologue experiment with the vocals half-'scratched' out so that you can't hear them clearly; not that that really matters, if you read the lyric sheet. The album closes with "...In the Spirit," a loungy shuffle that while amusing, again comes off as a rehash of the superior "America Drinks and Goes Home" off of Absolutely Free. This is the most cohesive of the Faust albums I've heard, and it's also probably the album I would choose to recommend someone start out with if they wanted to explore this band. At the same time, given all the lavish praise that is heaped on the band's early era of recordings, I'd have to stand with the dissenting opinion that it doesn't add anything too far above and beyond its sources. review by Joe McGlinchey — 2-13-06 —

m a t t

Faust's debut album was one of the great scams in rock history: band manager and producer Uwe Nettelbeck convinced the folks at Polydor Records to give the unrecorded German band a contract on the basis of word-of-mouth alone. And not only did he get them a contract, he managed to swing them a cash advance large enough to build their own recording studio and have 24-hour on-call support. The resulting album (which took about a year of studio time to make) was a Krautrock landmark, although more notable for its chaotic music and harsh textures than for its sales figures (it sold quite poorly). Understandably upset, Polydor placed demands for accessibility on the band for their second release. To some degree Faust complied, and thus presents one of the problems that I have with Faust So Far. Faust's first album was, in my opinion, a great album partly because it had a collective personality and purpose to it that transcended the limitations of those portions of the record that would probably not strike me as being great if I was to hear them out of context. Despite a good amount of excellent material, Faust So Far has none of this attitude or purpose. The differences are apparent right from the start. "It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl," with its primitive tom-tom beat, spiky guitars and minimalist atmosphere, is a hypnotically catchy tune and an excellent approximation of the Velvet Underground circa 1967. But therein lies the issue: what is Faust doing approximating anybody? The Faust that made the previous album took their influences and wrenched them into something new; they tossed pop history into a blender and splattered the goo onto the master tape like a Jackson Pollock painting. Sure, the music was significantly informed by the work of Frank Zappa, but since the influence sounded more about the process than the result it didn't seem like a big deal to me. Furthermore, with the debut album, you never knew what would happen next in any of the songs; with the normal rules not applying, each piece had an exhilarating range of possibilities that enhanced the listening experience. This happens a lot less often on Faust So Far. Without the overriding sense of purpose, Faust So Far becomes merely the sum of its parts. "On the Way to Abamae" is a solo acoustic guitar piece. It's pretty and nice, but it seemingly only exists to provide a light contrast between "It's a Rainy Day" and "No Harm." The ten-minute "No Harm" is the album's centerpiece and the closest link on Faust So Far to the aesthetics of the earlier album. It builds slowly; a few minutes of eerie organ chords playing over some rolling drums. A jangly guitar is added and then a synthesized horn theme sprouts up out of nowhere. And then the whole thing erupts into a gloriously warped jam, all fuzzed guitar riffs, buzzing electronics and an insane chorus wherein the band repeatedly yells the nonsense lyric "Daddy, take the banana; tomorrow is Sunday!" It's classic Faustian mayhem. The other great song on the album is "I've Got My Car and My TV." It starts out as a clumsy nursery rhyme, but then changes over to a dazzling instrumental, with a Zappa-like clavinet melody providing the base for electric guitar and honking saxophone leads. "Rainy Day," "No Harm" and "I've Got My Car and My TV" take up half of the album. The other half is mostly made up of the more experimental pieces, all of which I find to be at least interesting but none of which seems like much more than that taken piecemeal. "On the Way to Abamae" has been mentioned. The title track loops a John Fogerty-ish guitar lick over some atmospheric synthesizers for six minutes. It's kind of spacey. "Mamie is Blue" is an impressively ugly slab of grinding synthesizers and processed sound. No doubt it is an example of a pioneering approach to sound engineering (Brian Eno may have been taking notes) and, as a piece of music, it would have made a great part of something larger. On it's own it's just impressively ugly. "Picnic On a Frozen River" and "Me Lack Space" are under-a-minute sound experiments which lead up to "In the Spirit," which sounds like a vaudeville/burlesque theater pastiche. It's also something that Frank Zappa might do but, again, without a larger context it's just a neat-sounding novelty. In sum, I think that Faust So Far is half excellent, half good and almost always interesting. It is the most accessible item in Faust's catalog, thereby making it a tempting pick as the best place for a newcomer to start with Faust. Yet because it lacks the special synergy that I think elevates the great first and fourth albums, I feel that it is probably the least "representative" of the four proper Faust releases. Start with the debut. review by Matt P. — 8-6-05 —