Faust

If you had to associate the word "legend" with one band, plenty of people would think of Faust. Godfathers of kraut-rock, but really patron saints of all experimental rock, these Germans left an indelible mark on rock history in just three years of activity. A trajectory that begins in 1971 with the landmark debut “Faust”, continues in 1972 with “So Far”, and closes in 1973 with “The Faust Tapes” and “Faust IV”. All essential albums, especially the first one, which kicks off a memorable season, fittingly sealed by the closing statement of their fourth record, a sort of ideal completion of the circle.

Faust will forever remain the emblem of kraut-rock, not only because that's Julian Cope's opinion in his “Krautrocksampler”, but above all because they embodied the very essence of the German movement, sharpening its diversity and autonomy from the influences of the Anglophone musical world. While never giving up frequent nods to bands like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones (name-checked at the start of “Why Don't You Eat Carrots” as a starting point to be surpassed in order to open up a new sonic world) or Pink Floyd (at least three tracks on the fourth album), Faust nonetheless represented a noble attempt to radically break free from the omnipresent influence of British-rooted pop-rock.

“Faust IV” marks a turning point for the German band, made up of Werner “Zappi” Diermaier (percussion), Hans Joachim Irmler (organ), Jean-Hervé Péron (electric bass), Rudolf Sosna (guitar and keyboards) and Gunter Wüsthoff (synthesizer and sax). From one angle, it can look like an attempt to dignify the classic song format (“The Sad Skinhead”, “Jennifer”); from another, a (successful) experiment aimed at demolishing it (“Krautrock”). Upon release, it was mistakenly perceived by many as a normalization of Faust (even Julian Cope described it as a “tremendous disappointment”) and was largely ignored by their contemporaries, even more so than the three previous LPs, which were certainly no commercial successes either (aside from “The Faust Tapes”, which sold as many as a hundred thousand copies).

The failure was so massive for Virgin that it led to the band's breakup and the stillbirth of their fifth album (only released in 2022). Certainly, the rather forgettable cover art didn't help – especially compared to the iconic sleeve of their debut – but the bigger issue is that Faust, as always, were already too far ahead of both the public and the record industry.

Even the opening track “Krautrock” sounds like it comes from another planet entirely. An electronic whirlpool played on traditional rock instruments that aren't simply deconstructed but utterly pulverized, rendered almost unrecognizable. In this dusty magma of notes, you find yourself in some unknown middle ground between a psychedelic trip, cosmic music, Indian raga, industrial music ante-litteram and spatial avant-garde. However you look at it, it's a new world, a manifesto of the new German rock with which Faust – by using “Krautrock” as the very title of the track – crown themselves the godfathers of the entire movement. When the drums kick in at the end, bringing out rhythm and momentum, we're battered by searing feedback that draws a line between ecstasy and horror, between cosmic meditation and spatial dread. That alone would be enough to grasp the importance of “Faust IV”, but after pulverizing guitar, bass and drums, Faust go on to offer their own version of the song format.

“The Sad Skinhead” is a bizarre track, distinctly Barrett-esque, demented and delirious, a perfectly realized attempt at an alternative song. But the second masterpiece is “Jennifer”. A trembling bass note and a brief guitar arpeggio open one of the most lopsided and ambiguous ballads ever written. If there was ever a way to turn a ballad into something unpredictable and far from trite, Faust surely found it. After a slow, hypnotic melody, a fresh surge of feedback sweeps away every convention, twelve years before the Jesus And Mary Chain built an entire career on their walls of distortion.

There's no shortage of nods to the more psychedelic Pink Floyd, meaning the Pink Floyd of Faust's own era. “Just A Second” opens with a bass line straight out of Waters's playbook, like an intense lysergic trip reminiscent of “Ummagumma”, but it very quickly breaks away into a sudden wave of deconstructed avant-garde. All within barely three minutes, when the initial feeling was of a long-haul psychedelic excursion. Luckily, the definitive eleven-minute version would be released in 2006.

Another Floyd-like bass line opens “Giggy Smile / Picnic on a Frozen River”, but everything turns into a joke, an amusing parody with an ending that's almost like children's music, blending the irony of Zappa with jazz improvisation in an outlandish melting pot.

The final three tracks still hover between joke and art music, combining minimal psychedelic folk (“Läuft... Heisst das es läuft oder es kommt bald... Läuft”), noise electronics (“Run”) and a new, once again Floyd-like folk (“It's a Bit Of A Pain”), described by Cope as “truly sad”, but actually reassessed decades later even by its harshest detractors.

The 2006 reissue shuffles things around a bit, stretching or trimming tracks, and includes a small but significant unreleased piece, “Piano Piece”, a brief piano improvisation that sounds like it could have come off “Faust Tapes”: an experiment containing the seeds of lo-fi music, minimalism and ambient piano music, once again showing the powerful, forward-looking vision the German band always maintained.

An era comes to a close, but perhaps a new way of thinking about popular music opens up instead, one in which the musician's freedom from record labels' agendas comes first and foremost. In this respect, Faust have always been a model for every truly free musician.

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16/09/2023