THE FAUST TAPES

As a follow up with their album of So Far, Faust decided to do a different type of experiment, which was instead of making a complex and weird krautrock album (which this album definitely is one, but I digress) they instead create an album that'd sell at the same price as a single. While I do not know how much a single would cost in 1973, it clearly was some sort of hit, at least in the UK, selling over 60,000 copies. Whether that number was due to the UK having a bunch of Faust fans, which I doubt, or the sales pitch of the album being the same price as a single was enough to get people to buy it, it became one of Faust's best selling albums and solidified them in the Krautrock spectrum more than they ever were.

The reason for the small price was due to the band's producer, Nettelback, signing the band to Virgin Records, and with a deal that the record company can acquire the group's tapes they worked on when making So Far, in exchange for making an album at a very low price. Virgin agreed to this, which prompted the band to gain a lot more traction than they ever got before. The traction was so great that the album would land a 12 on the charts, but was redacted due to the price, which in today's world with albums being at pretty much any price, it'd probably stay on the charts.

The sales pitch and the title doesn't lie however, because what you get here are just a bunch of tapes the band recorded, featuring both a mix of sound collage, Avant Garde, minimalism, and the whole shi-bang of music the band messed around with. What I dig about this record is that no song here sounds the same. You get a bunch of different musical stylings and jams that all create this expansive sound that the band played around with from time to time. I like the fact that many of the songs here create this uncomfortable atmosphere, more so than what their first and second albums provided. It allows them to stretch their arms and grasp the expansive genre of Krautrock in new and exciting ways that makes things fresh and new each listen. I like this a lot in music since it just allows for more eclecticism, and this album really does sell in its novelty.

I also really like how fun this album can get, with how random the songs are, you cannot predict what will come next, and how long they can last. Sometimes you might get something like Flashback Caruso, but then you might get something like Donnerwetter, and it doesn't matter if you want something actually rocking, or ambient, or just an album filled with sound collages, this is an album filled with nothing but tapes, pure experiments the band just wanted to try out for fun, and that is what this album is at the end of the day, dumb fun. An album that is nothing but fun is something I can get behind, even if it has a weird Faust charm to it.

However, in the same retrospect, I really do not like a lot of these songs due to how little they have in substance. Since I am listening to the versions on Spotify, and not a vinyl version (which these days costs way more than what it used to sell for), I do not get the glory of simply calling both sides two separate songs, instead I have to listen to 26 songs, each with their more varied lengths, and whether or not they have any real amount of power they fill me. The longer songs, the ones that are not just a few seconds long, are the highlights for me. They feature a lot more than what some of the 20 second stuff gives, sadly though they do not appear as much as I'd hoped.

Songs come and go like lightning rounds in a pistol, and with it means that none of the shorter songs will last for me, aside from maybe Dr. Schwitters (Continued) having this very nice melody carrying the song. I think Faust works best when they aren't making incredibly short songs that do not last, and instead focus more on their craftsmanship of more pronounced songs. That is the reason why I did not like Mamie Is Blue, Picnic On A Frozen River, and Me Lack Space on So Far due to just how short and unimpactful they made me feel in comparison with many other songs on that album. This is the same deal, and sadly due to there being way more of those ones here, it feels less like a true improvement and more of just the same from So Far with a lot more shorter stuff than the better and more improved stuff the band would create later on, which the more I think about it, really does make sense since these tapes were made during the So Far sessions.

Despite the fact that this may not be the band's best record, I can say for certainty that this was an important record in the band's career, and one that is important for me as well. Personally I probably would not be reviewing these Faust albums if it weren't for my intrigue of this album. While I do not love it, I cannot deny its impact on me, and on a lot of folks in the 70s. Something interesting, but one that shouldn't be overlooked.