Before he became a billionaire and went into space, Richard Branson had some brilliant ideas when it came to music marketing. In 1973, he enabled the completely unknown bassist of Kevin Ayers’ band The Whole World to make his solo debut “Tubular Bells” – a very good investment with five million units sold. More or less at the same time, the third album of the Krautrock-Berserker Faust was released on Virgin: “The group would like to make it clear that this is not their third album, but a bonus release – which is sold for the price of a single – on the occasion of their signing with Virgin Records, for whom they will soon be recording their next official album,” the cover read.
A dance in the sun under the influence of a hefty dose of LSD
The price was tempting: for an unbeatable 49 pence, 50,000 English people brought a piece of real avant-garde into their living room. The “Faust Tapes” were actually just a kind of leftover recycling. In the three years that the musicians lived and worked together in Wümme, Lower Saxony, they recorded almost every session. This resulted in a collection of around 5000 tapes. The music on the album is extremely heterogeneous, but the “Faust Tapes” are perhaps the band’s most accessible work. “Flashback Caruso” oscillates between early Pink Floyd and DIY indie pop, a dance in the sun under the influence of a heavy dose of LSD.
“Voices And Trumpet And All” briefly lets a few dark clouds of noise pass by, until in the next track post-punk is invented before punk. “J’ai mal aux dents” is just as powerful and just as catchy as “It’s A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl” from the previous album “So Far”. The chant works like a mantra. The sound explosions, dominated by the saxophone, are close to free jazz. “It was her persistence throughout her journey that made Faust so legendary today,” enthuses Krautrock expert Julian Cope. There is nothing to add.
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