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Class D
| Main Category: | Avantgarde |
| Also applicable: | Ambient |
| Starting Period: | The Artsy/Rootsy Years |
| Also active in: | The Interim Years, From Grunge To The Present Day |
ALBUM REVIEWS:
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When it comes to Krautrock, almost every band in the movement seems to have its own "niche of influences" carved out. Kraftwerk, for instance, seem to mainly be appreciated for their contributions to the synth-pop scene. Can helped pioneer various dance styles, from disco to trip-hop. Amon Düül II had a more 'progressive' orientation and effectively predicted the appearance of bands like Queen, with their grandiose, pompous style. Cluster were among the most important pioneers of ambient and New Age.
Faust had the luck to become one of the first 'industrial' bands to walk this planet. For them, music and noise were interspersed in a far more tight and inseparable way than for most of their colleagues - even Kraftwerk, who also started out as "industrial" dudes and only effectuated the transgression to 'synth-pop' around 1973 or so, never really pretended to be making true music. In this respect, Faust, quite deservedly, are often dubbed the most radical German band of the early 70's. They never had even the least chance of commercial success, although, ironically, a cunning marketing ploy helped them to gain commercial success at least on a temporary basis (see on that in the review of The Faust Tapes). Taking their clue from modern avantgarde classical, Zappa, the Velvet Underground, stuff like 'Revolution # 9' and so on, they went on to shock and amaze the general public with music so 'ugly' and 'ear-destructive' that it took nearly half a decade for someone to put out something even more ugly and ear-destructive (namely, Throbbing Gristle, a band who represents the industrial style by definition and whose, ahem, 'music' I'm simply not willing to tolerate. Not now, at least). Naturally, there's too much pure shock value in the recorded output of Faust for me to rate them really high. In general, their music is a very acquired taste and is rather hard to evaluate objectively. Much of it simply lacks a sense of purpose - way too often, you get the usual feeling that the band is simply messing around in the studio just to sound weird and shocking, with little else on their minds. Repeated listens prove that a lot of work went into most of their records, and even if you hate them, you have to at least respect the amount of effort spent; unfortunately, repeated listens also blunt the 'intriguing' factor. See, Faust are not like Kraftwerk. The latter placed most of their emphasis on monotonousness: no matter how complex or esoteric their recorded landscape was, no matter whether it was a soothin' synth pattern or an amplified engine roar, the point always was in it going forever, at least, for as long as the overall record length would allow it. On the contrary, Faust are very economic in that respect - they have plenty of long songs, of course (heck, the entire Faust Tapes are just forty three minutes of unseparated sound collages), but their grooves never really overstay their welcome. Their grooves aren't always interesting, but check it and see - the word 'overlong' never appears in these reviews. But, on the other hand, a very important factor in the initial success of a Faust record is the sequencing of grooves: they always take you by surprise, making you wonder what goes next, replacing quiet acoustic ditties with outbursts of volcanic synth noises, replacing these with R'n'B influenced "static passages", replacing these with comic dialogues, and so on, and so on. And, of course, while this trick may work on first or second listen, the impression wears off pretty quickly. I could also accuse Faust of several other crimes - a limited approach to instrumentation (sometimes), a lack of true atmosphericness (especially on their, rather raw, debut album), maybe something else. But I don't really think it's necessary, because most people won't feel the need for it anyway: Faust are one of those bands that you either absolutely love or hate the guts of. I don't do neither - to be honest, I think that the band's flaws and advantages are distributed in a fifty-fifty kind of way. That said, it would be foolish to deny them their huge influence or an overall place in the 'Krautrock Pantheon'. If anything, they really proved that you can be trippy and crazy and make interesting music at the same time, something that Captain Beefheart, for instance, just couldn't do (except for maybe on Spotlight Kid, but the amount of true weirdness on that album is debatable). And they were certainly True Masters Of Sound, producing noises the likes of which no other Krautrock band could master. You may hate Faust Tapes, but you gotta hear them at least once, just to know that these things were indeed possible in 1973. For obvious reasons, the band's actual members are very rarely mentioned - the music is so dang impersonal - but I'll try to mention the initial lineup of Faust, formed around 1971, all the same. Werner Diermeier - drums; Hans Joachim Irmler - organ; Jean-Herve Peron - bass; Rudolf Sossna - guitar; Gunther Wusthoff - keyboards & woodwinds. The band itself was formed and managed by producer Uwe Nettelbeck, often called Faust's 'George Martin' when it comes to actually discussing the music.General Evaluation:
Listenability: 0/5. Oh
YEAH. This won't come to you easily.
Resonance: 1/5. In the "ugly"
department, yes, but not much else.
Originality: 5/5. This band's
most redeeming feature.
Adequacy: 2/5. The exact rating
depends on our figuring out what it is that they want to achieve.
Diversity: 2/5. The exact rating
depends on whether this criteria really ever matters for this band.
Overall: 2.0 = D
on the rating scale.
Year Of Release: 1971
Record rating = 7
Overall rating = 9
Definitely revolutionary and all that, but is this something you're supposed to enjoy?
Best song: WHY DON'T YOU EAT CARROTSTrack listing: 1) Why Don't You Eat Carrots; 2) Meadow Meal; 3) Miss Fortune.
I suppose it should be immediately made clear that Faust the band are named that way not after Doctor Faust, but after the German word for 'fist'. And yeah, that's a fist on the front cover all right, albeit a weirdly modified one. A smudged X-ray picture of a fist - is that supposed to mean that things are, in fact, never what they seem? What an appropriate allegory.
This was definitely the most radical out of all the Kraftwerk projects so far. Most radical, but not unprecedented, because as far as "industrial" pioneering went, Kraftwerk also released their debut album the same year, and it would be a hard task to try and define which one of the two served as a better 'base' for the further development of that movement. For me, it goes without saying that Faust's debut is far more listenable than Kraftwerk's one, but that doesn't mean I'm ready to go wildly ravin' about it like the average Faust fan. In a certain sense, Faust is the direct German analogy of Frank Zappa's Lumpy Gravy. There's probably a bit more music on here than on Zappa's album, but in bothe cases, that music is interspersed with various noises, crackles, pops, cut-and-paste sonic collages, bits of dialog and other what-not. The main difference, of course, is that Faust rely heavily on their electronic equipment, and all the collages are widely spiced with loony, totally out-of-control synthesizer effects, "astral grooves", "cosmic boogies", you get the drift. So perhaps it would be wiser to describe Faust as a Teutonic variant of Lumpy Gravy spiced up with psychedelic and sci-fi sonic textures inherited from 'Interstellar Overdrive'. This means that I should probably be hating this album, and to a certain extent, it's true; I will never consider it the band's masterpiece and will always insist that its follow-up was a huge improvement. I don't care that much for 'weirdness for weirdness' sake': this music isn't able to take the listener places, and it isn't supposed to - how can it take you places if the musical themes usually change in the blink of an eye just because they are supposed to be changed without any special plan? I can imagine that by the standards of 1971, this was pretty whacked indeed (but not as whacked as we sometimes tend to see it - remember, the previous year saw Tone Float by Organisation, future Kraftwerk, and, well, in the long run one could say that Faust is nothing but a grandiose expansion over the themes already stated out loud and proud in 'Interstellar Overdrive' and 'Revolution # 9'); by today's standards, this doesn't have any novelty value. That said, I don't really hate the album, if only because there is some music on it, believe it or not. Some darn funny music, too. Faust's unlimited musical fantasy on here is shaped in the form of three tracks - 'Why Don't You Eat Carrots', 'Meadow Meal' and 'Miss Fortune'. Not that you can actually notice when one ends and the next one begins, but the fact is, all three of them are based on certain repetitive motives that crop up from time to time and 'unite' the track. 'Why Don't You Eat Carrots', in particular, features as its main "melody" a hilarious, parodic-sounding brass-enhanced martial rhythm that abruptly metamorphoses into an abrasive, nastily distorted guitar riff. "Meadow Meal"s main theme is a vocal one - a slightly dissonant mantraic chant. And the lengthiest track, 'Miss Fortune', has perhaps the best "pure musical period" of all the songs within its first five or six minutes, when the band concocts a gruesome industrial jam based on the interaction of an exaggeratedly distorted rhythm guitar track and ominous, creepy 'bubbly' organ playing. These things can hardly be noticed on first listen - it's later listens that provide you with this sort of 'musical anchor' that doesn't let the tracks just crumble around you like a totally incoherent mess. This is one of the salvaging factors. Another factor, of course, is that these guys had such a vast, limitless fantasy: it's practically impossible to predict what will come next after a certain section has neared its end. Well, what can you expect of an album which starts with a poisonous blast of synthesized white noise, and then, all of a sudden, little radio bits of 'Satisfaction' and 'All You Need Is Love' are starting to emerge out of this noise? Of an album whose longest track, after about fifteen minutes of "astral jamming" and various noisy thunderstorms, suddenly ends in a nonsensic, absurdist declamation of a set of images with each band member pronouncing each following word in a different speaker? I could go on, but I don't wanna spoil the picture. Problem is, while these things sure are interesting, they don't offer you much for repeated listenings. Okay, one, two, maybe three or four times in a row will work, but how can you get inspired with this stuff when you've already memorized it by heart? Ah, well. Whatever. I hope that my review of this album did give you a more or less adequate picture, and now you can check this little monster out for yourself. If you have no problem with "weirdness for weirdness' sake", this record will definitely take the top spot in your collection, together with Trout Mask Replica, Lumpy Gravy, Kraftwerk II and... and... Neil Young's Dead Man Soundtrack, I suppose. Me, I do have that little problem, so I'm much more happy with whatever followed this record.
Year Of Release: 1972
Record rating = 10
Overall rating = 12
Conventional? No sir! Accessible? Depends on what you deem accessible, sir!
Best song: NO HARMTrack listing: 1) It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl; 2) On The Way To Abamae; 3) No Harm; 4) So Far; 5) Mamie Is Blue; 6) I've Got My Car And My TV; 7) Picnic On A Frozen River; 8) Me Lack Space...; 9) ...In The Spirit.
Much different. Much less revolutionary, too, but... hey, wait a minute. Why do we always keep messing with the term 'revolutionary'? It is commonly accepted that Faust was the band's groundbreaking album and So Far was the band's accessible album, but why do we accept these notions by default as excluding each other? I have already expressed the idea that the band's debut was not as tremendously revolutionary as might seem, what with all those Zappa, Beefheart, and Kraftwerk records surrounding it. Plus, there's Stockhausen, you know. As for So Far, it is certainly a record that's far easier to take - it has nine tracks instead of three, it has distinct melodies, it is far more "song-oriented" than before, it is, in fact (oh horror), memorable.
Does that make it any less innovative? Hardly. This album has all the good qualities of Faust preserved, but adds the accessibility factor - and let me tell you, it may be dang hard to make a 'weird inaccessible' record, but it's thrice dang hard to make a 'weird accessible' record. I'm pretty sure some red-hot fans could have branded So Far as a 'pop sellout', but for the most part, this is a record that can make the snubs and the simple listeners shake hands (that is, if there's enough good will to seek out a compromise). Let me just point out this stuff, song by song, and maybe you'll see why I like this record so darn much, and think this is the album Faust is primarily going to be remembered for, if they're going to be remembered for something, of course. Side one starts with a wild thump-thump-thump-thump (similar to the driving rhythm of the Velvet Underground's 'Waiting For The Man' and very probably a subtle tribute to one of the band's main influences - only the sound here is cleaner and crisper) that leads into 'It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl', a pretty, hypnotic chant upheld by Rudolf Sossna's masterful guitar riffage. The seven minutes of the track are perfectly justified by its crescendos - adding not just the obligatory white noise sound effects, but also stately synthezier landscapes and even a cheerful, hilarious sax riff at the end. Experimental? For sure. But also addictive as hell, if only for that cool guitar rhythm that prompts me to take out my air guitar from time to time. Then there's a short folkish acoustic interlude ('On The Way To Abamae') which sounds as tame as anything - could have been recorded by just about any German traditionalist band, except that no traditionalist band would have bothered to insert that moody synth pattern in the background. And, of course, no traditionalist band could have followed it up with such a magnum opus as 'No Harm'. Grand, bombastic, church-organ based introduction - replaced by swirling sci-fi blasts - replaced by another majestic folkish sweep - that's three minutes of the introduction - and then we blaze off to the main rockin' part. For pure energy and venom of delivery, this track may only be rivaled by maybe a couple Amon Düül II compositions on the whole Krautrock scene. The lyrics are classic and known by heart by everybody who's at least vaguely heard of Faust: 'Daddy, take the banana, tomorrow is Sunday'. They could have chosen not to insert any lyrics at all, but for mystifying reasons they preferred to chant this line. I don't blame them for this decision. The coda is classic, too! Hear those "gloop-gloop-gloop" noises - I suppose it's the guitar, nothing less - replaced by the wildest scream you'll ever hear on a Faust record. See? These Germans can really rock! The title track plunges us into the realms of fusion... or does it? It starts off as an innocent jazz-rock shuffle, punctuated by occasional synth beeps and horn blasts, but the further it progresses, the more mystics and depth it accumulates, only to eventually become one of Faust's most atmospheric, imaginative pieces of work. You can almost see the planets swoop past you in full parade. So far, indeed - and a nice soothing breather before the rip-roarin' industrial grumble of 'Mamie Is Blue' (currently one of my favourite, if not the favourite, pick from this oh-so dangerous genre). Rarely do 'industrialists' manage to capture the 'industrial cycle' atmosphere without making the song unlistenable; this one has a rhythm, dynamics of its own, and depth-a-plenty. Did I mention yet how the record wisely and carefully alternates between light and heavy? If your ears seem to be falling off after the onslaught of 'Mamie', the light, pretty 'I've Got My Car And My TV' will perk 'em up back to life. The catchy synth riff that propels the main part of the tune along will stick in your brain till the end of time, and once again you'll be going to pick up that air guitar. Two minute-long pieces of dissonance, noise and cut-and-paste collages follow ('Picnic On A Frozen River' and 'Me Lack Space...'), reminding us that hey, they're still Faust and they're still the same weird guys they were a year ago, and '...In The Spirit' closes this fabulous record on a carnivalesque note, much like 'On With The Show' on the Stones' Satanic. This is one of those near-perfect combinations of wreckless avantgarde exploration and traditional harmonic elements I'm always looking for. I dare say that if we look for which of the two first Faust records was more influential on the Europeanized rock music scene of the late Seventies, it would certainly be So Far. But damn the influences: it's a cool record to be 'untraditionally entertained' with. Only a madman would want to be 'entertained' by Faust; this album, and I insist on it, has a lot of entertaining value once you break down a few barriers. It also shows that these guys did have some real musical talent - both in the aspects of melody making ('No Harm' and 'I've Got My Car And My TV' qualify particularly) and technical brilliance (we didn't even have the possibility to assess the guys' mastery of their instruments on the previous record). In short, a must have, and Faust's highest achievement on the musical scene as far as enjoyability is concerned.
Year Of Release: 1973
Record rating = 9
Overall rating = 11
Faust's "Thick As A Brick", isn't it? Much more inventive than the debut album, anyway.
Best song: I don't have much choice, do I?Track listing: 1) The Faust Tapes.
Surprise surprise! This is really good. An even bigger surprise is that this record sold 50,000 copies in the UK upon release... then again, this particular surprise is not so big, considering that Virgin was selling it for the price of a single - a cunning little stunt which resulted in Faust really BREAKING IT BIG! Well, maybe not exactly so, but still, it was a major feat for the band, and probably one of the main reasons why the band is one of the most well-known Krautrock outfits on the British Isles nowadays. Indeed, not everybody would buy such a record even for the price of a single if he knew that all it consists of is one enormous forty-plus minute track (well, two on the LP, I suppose, but just one in the CD edition).
The funny thing, though, is that this forty-plus minute monster is, almost in its entirety, quite listenable; I didn't compare it with Thick As A Brick in the tagline just because it's long - a more important thing in common is that both are, in fact, just separate songs and "musical pieces" sewn together rather than giant monolithic sound panoramas. Of course, the pieces on Jethro Tull's album were sewn together through various musical links and tidbits, while Faust natrually prefer a more direct, blunt approach. All of the bits and pieces here were recorded separately in between 1971 and 1973, but instead of releasing some tired 'odds and sods' record, the band preferred a more radical solution and just spliced them together with no breaks or subtle metamorphoses whatsoever. Amazingly, it mostly works. There are enough of these bits and pieces to guarantee the length - you could count something like six or seven "main" sections and a similar number of "lesser" sections, some of which illustrate the more 'industrial' side of Faust, and some the 'gentler' side that was so cleverly manifested on So Far. None of the themes here get repeated, so the approach is widely different from the one on Faust, where a certain theme kept appearing and disappearing only to get replaced by noises and crazy improvisations; here, the improvisations are kept separately from the more 'stable' pieces. This helps concentrate on the good stuff and disregard the pseudo-musical hooliganry (not that there's way too much pseudo-musical hooliganry on here). The good stuff is, for the most part, almost as good as the best stuff on So Far. At about 1:10 into the abyss you are greeted with crisp acoustic guitars, a tinkling piano and a gentle, almost moving folkish melody that, for some reason, once again brings the Jethro Tull analogy on my mind. For three or four minutes, it plods on uninterrupted by anything, with just a few distorted synth passages by way of moody, thought-provoking solos... ever heard a gentle folk song with a brooding synth solo? Oh, yeah, 'Lucky Man'. But apart from 'Lucky Man'? Ah well, if you ever heard one apart from 'Lucky Man', don't tell me. I don't want to spoil the overall importance and pomp of that rhetoric question. Then, at about 7:05 into the album, we get this weird jazzy jam with the band chanting totally uncomprehensible, but very carefully enunciated and very repetitive gibberish. Intriguing, involving, almost sickeningly catchy and energetic... along the way, the vocals disappear, replaced by some inspired sax solos (so it's entertaining jazz-rock all the way), then they come back a couple times along with some paranoid dialogs that I think some people actually spend lifetimes on deciphering. Heck, if I had an extra lifetime, I'd probably spend it on similar things, too. Then the next "significant" part comes at about 15:25 into the song. There's that dangerous funky bassline, there's that sonic synthesizer assault that almost gives an impression of a bloody space battle (don't forget the funky bassline!), there's the lethargic saxophones that seem to announce the retreat (have you forgotten about the funky bassline?), and then some lush synth backgrounds illuminate the battlefield (no more funky bassline! Alackaday). After that, there's a lengthy, lengthy, lengthy part where Mr Irmler mainly has fun with his organ, i.e. pulls out noises that could have turned an army of rabid elephants back on their masters. I'm not too hot on that one, but if you're feeling sleepy and desperately need something to pull you out of your morphaeic state, nothing like a good punch of the most unlistenable noise on Earth! The sing-songey bits reappear again much later, at around 35:00 into the whole concept, where they again come in with a catchy jazzy number ('yes I see you are the one to BE me, yes I see you are the one to be ME' - how cool is that?) that is surprisingly jerky on the verses and surprisingly solemn in the chorus. After a bit, this chant transforms into another folkish ballad... and the album finishes almost as it begun, with a pretty acoustic shuffle against which somebody recites a lengthy prosaic bit in French, occasionally switching onto German. Maybe all that description was a bit hasty and didn't manage to give you the true picture of the album, but I challenge anybody to do a better one. It's Faust, what do you want, not Barry Manilow. It's all like a wonderful trip through your subconscious, granted you're brave enough to look into it. As a 'conceptual' piece, it's ten times more mature than Faust, even if all these bits weren't originally intended for such a format. Yes, the album does have its frustrating spots (mainly near the very middle), but the secret is that much of it can - and must - be taken as short individual statements. It works just as well as a "collection", maybe even better.
Year Of Release: 1973
Record rating = 8
Overall rating = 10
Disciplined and rewarding, well-polished and well-sounding, if not exactly breathtaking.
Best song: KRAUTROCKTrack listing: 1) Krautrock; 2) The Sad Skinhead; 3) Jennifer; 4) Just A Second (Starts Like That); 5) Picnic On A Frozen River, Deuxieme Tableau; 6) Giggy Smile; 7) Lauft... Heisst Das Es Lauft Oder Es Kommt Bald... Lauft; 8) It's A Bit Of A Pain.
Normally, I respect logics, but in certain situations, logics sucks. Logically speaking, Faust were right when they released this record. As we know, The Faust Tapes had sold well, and now Faust were faced with the problem of finding that dangerous balance between the accessible and the inaccessible so as not to piss off the fans and not to lose the general public's interest either. In this respect, Faust IV is a pretty solid offering, as it manages to evade most of the dissonance and "anti-musical" noise-making of their most radical output and 'tames' their reckless outbursts just a little bit without really sacrificing the experimental or industrial edge. At the same time, they start expanding their boundaries a bit, delving into other styles that they thought the record buyers could appreciate.
But the public was following its own logics, too - Faust Tapes mainly sold so well because of their cheapness, and I suppose most of the innocent listeners lulled in by the low price nearly had a fit when they properly examined their acquisition. How could they have been expected to buy another album by the same group, moreover, for full price this time? Faust IV sank like a stone on the charts; immediately afterwards, Virgin kicked Faust off the label; and the band was so desperate and depressed that they disbanded soon afterwards. Logics sucks, now doesn't it? That said, I still like this album a lot - not as much as the far more groundbreaking So Far, and not even as much as the wild bomb of Tapes, but it was still a pretty nice little record with no truly bad efforts at all. Like I said, the style is a little bit more 'mainstream-ified', but that only means that the record holds fewer surprises than usual, and on some of the tracks Faust forget their main motto for the previous three albums - "brevity is the sister of wit". The opening track, boldly and ambitiously dubbed 'Krautrock', goes on for almost twelve minutes, all the time based on one groove, something unheard of in Faust's catalog. Fortunately, it's so dang hypnotic and mystifying that I don't have a lot of problems with it - in fact, as far as atmosphere goes, it might just be the best track on here. And certainly the quintessential industrial track - the 'melody' is provided with an incessant grind of distorted guitars and synthesizers that don't vary much in tone but still manage to hit your brain mightily with that ominous squash'n'mash. If you hate this track, stay away from industrial for good. If you're an industrial fan, your collection is simply incomplete, wait, no, it's simply inexistent without 'Krautrock'. Two more lengthy tracks on here are also top quality. 'Jennifer' is essentially a ballad with more of those folkish inclinations, and certainly a huge influence on Brian Eno and his brand of 'ambient balladry'. It's moody and contemplative, with a few of those otherworldly synth rhythms in the background that make you feel so small and humble... until it gradually begins exploding and falling apart in explosions of white noise, culminating in total chaos and ear-destructive Armageddon, before giving way to a dissonant pseudo-ragtime electric piano bit. The Final Joke. Who knows what we should be doing with songs like that? Is that just a gimmick or a serious statement? Well, I like it. I don't have anything against a serious, moody, solid musical composition suddenly going off into weird directions as long as these directions actually take me somewhere. The third lengthy track is... go figure... 'Picnic On A Frozen River, Deuxieme Tableau' - a partial rewrite of the multi-part suite from the second side of So Far, with the classy synth riff I'd lauded so much reprised once again in a rather fast, danceable mood. Maybe it's overlong and not really significant, but catchiness is catchiness, baby. And this sure is dang catchy. As for the shorter songs, they range from silly childish throwaways (including the hilarious reggae-tinged 'Sad Skinhead', maybe Faust's best 'comic' number ever) to more of those melancholic folkish introspections ('Giggy Smile' - but why do they have to interrupt it with those gnashins, squishing noises in the middle? Beats me) to even a "traditionalistic" ballad with blues elements - 'It's A Bit Of A Pain', very appropriately entitled, as in every verse at a certain point the gentle acoustic and piano arrangement is underpinned by a typical Faust distorted bit of synth grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrunting. And the song ends with one of the most breathtaking "ugly" synth solos I've ever heard in my life. Ever heard a vomiting synth? I mean, not "heard a synth vomit", but a vomiting synth, a synth that keeps vomiting in different ways for a whole minute and fades away while still vomiting? I know, I know, the picture doesn't look particularly promising according to my words, but you gotta hear it to understand what it is exactly that I'm trying to say. The only thing I'm really not sold on here is that track with the very very lengthy German name I'm not going to bother to retype. It's just three and a half minutes of fiddling around trying to establish an ambient pattern with Irmler's distorted organ. We had it all from Kraftwerk and we don't want no more of that. It's boring, ugly, talentless and just takes up space. Dated, too. But then again, how can a dumb three-minute track like this spoil the fun from an entire album? Nice little record. Serves as a pretty good swan song, too. Make that eight a nine if you wish to - personally, I think that they coulda used a few more ideas to liven things up, but actually, it works as it is. Nothing truly innovative on here, but then again, apart from Kraftwerk, the Krautrock scene really wasn't innovating any more as late as 1973. Time to pass the baton back to the British bands, right? Roxy Music. Brian Eno. Ah, those were the names. 'Scuse me. Don't want to do no disjustice to Faust. Buy this album, it's a good start, or end, for that matter. Then again, maybe it was a good thing that Faust disbanded after that - never spoiling their reputation among the fans like Can or Amon Düül II. Makes 'em the most legendary Teutonic band, I guess. Down with sellouts! Long live Ricky Martin, the most consistent and unwavering performer in history!!!