Faust Tapes CD

Among the first bands to use the studio as an instrument, Germany's Faust stitched engrossing albums from bits of improvised ensemble play, primitive electronics, lovely folk motifs, lo-fi musique concrete, and fragments of punk, psychedelic, jazz, and progressive music. THE FAUST TAPES is even more of a splendid mishmash than the earlier FAUST and SO FAR, as the album is sequenced as a single track. As haphazard as TAPES' construction might seem, with an excess of ideas that almost seems to have tumbled out of the Faust 5 at random, one must realize that "construction" is the operative word here.

TAPES is a rare relic of cut-and-paste creativity from the days before sampling, and Faust's revolutionary jigsaw post-production techniques provided the model for future musical collages from other bands. TAPES' coarse cut-ups and abrupt splices continue to influence music, clearly informing the work of the so-called "Plunderphonic" artists (John Oswald, Negativland, Severed Heads), the lo-fi home tapers, and such post-industrial experimental outfits as Cabaret Voltaire, Death in June, and Nurse With Wound.

Reissue of the Krautrock icon's breakthrough album from1973, a continuous 43 minute work digitally indexed here with 26 passages. It sonically takes listeners from quiet bits of folk-rock and spoken word, to loud, mind-numbing rocky terrain similar to Zappa and Can. 'The Faust Tapes' is widely considered their finest moment. 1998 ReR.

Faust: Joachim Irmler, Jean Hervé Peron, Werner Diermaier, Arnulf Meifurt, Rudolf Sossna, Gunther Wusthoff.

Audio Remasterer: Matt Murman.

Spin (9/01, p.134) - Included in Spin's "5 Essential Krautrock Records" - "...Random noise, electronic blurs, improv-splatters, and a couple of monumental songs....warping the young minds of the art-punk generation."
Q (8/96, p.132) - 3 Stars - Good - "...riveting and extraordinary. A single studio suite where, in disorientating cuts and dissolves, plangent ballads become dub dreamscapes, garage punk evolves into modern jazz and eventually into the unknowable..."