“Five decades on, it’s still a bewildering but rewarding experience”: Faust’s self-titled debut album returns

The German collective’s opening salvo remains as uncompromising as ever

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Faust – Faust
(Image: © Bureau B)

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History doesn’t record the expression on the face of Horst Schmolzi, the A&R executive who shelled out a substantial amount of money to left-wing journalist and critic Uwe Nettelbeck in a but t0 find Germany’s answer to The Beatles – only to get Faust.

In Nettlebeck’s defence, Polydor did get a version of the Fab Four – unfortunately for them, it was the sound-collage experimentalists of Revolution 9 rather than the cuddly moptops who wanted to hold your hand.

After all, it was the 70s: the days of riots, revolt and The Red Army Faction, with a new generation of bands rejecting the Anglo-American hegemony that weighed heavily on post-war West German culture.

Nettelbeck brought Faust together from two different bands. Bassist Jean-Hervé Péron, guitarist Rudolf Sosna, and saxophonist Gunther Wüsthoff came from Nukleus. Keyboardist Hans-Joachim Irmler plus drummers Werner ‘Zappi’ Diermaier and Arnulf Meifert came from Campylongnatus Cetellli.

They used more of Polydor’s money to build themselves a studio in the village of Wümme in Lower Saxony. And while the commercial clout of Faust was minimal, it nonetheless proved influential in the decades that followed.

Opener Why Don’t You Eat Carrots? harbours no concerns of conventional songwriting as it concocts a demanding brew, using sound collages, snatches of marching band music and rough electronics as its main ingredients. It’s sampling before the invention of sampling.

The explosion of fuzz guitar that gatecrashes Meadow Meal is the only nod to orthodox instrumentation, while the chanting and random sounds that sandwich it are rounded off by Irmler’s primitive organ outro.

Spread over 16 and a half minutes, Miss Fortune finds Faust pushing forward with a live jam that veers in unexpected directions, as maps are torn up in favour of instinctive searching.

Even at a remove of over 50 years, Faust remains a bold, bewildering, but ultimately rewarding, experience.

Faust is on sale now via Bureau B.

James McNair
James McNair

James McNair grew up in East Kilbride, Scotland, lived and worked in London for 30 years, and now resides in Whitley Bay, where life is less glamorous, but also cheaper and more breathable. He has written for Classic Rock, Prog, Mojo, Q, Planet Rock, The Independent, The Idler, The Times, and The Telegraph, among other outlets. His first foray into print was a review of Yum Yum Thai restaurant in Stoke Newington, and in many ways it’s been downhill ever since. His favourite Prog bands are Focus and Pavlov’s Dog and he only ever sits down to write atop a Persian rug gifted to him by a former ELP roadie. 

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