Name: The Faust Tapes.
Brand: Faust

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

BB391LP

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Colour

Black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2022-08-12

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Shellshock

Tax rate GB

Standard:20

UPC / Barcode

Total Cap

1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / black

BB391

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1 / CD / Extended format: No / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

Artist

Faust

Genre GB

Krautrock

Label GB

Bureau B

Bureau B is an independent record label, music publisher, and booking agency based in Hamburg, Germany. Founded in 2005 by Gunther Buskies as a sister label to Tapete Records, Bureau B specializes in releasing a diverse range of electronic and avant-garde music. With a focus on reissues and new productions, the label has built an extensive catalogue that includes iconic albums from the Krautrock genre of the 1970s and early 1980s. They also release recordings by influential artists such as Die Wilde Jagd, Kreidler, Toulouse Low Trax, and more.

Known for their commitment to preserving classic electronic music, Bureau B has been rereleasing albums from renowned artists like Cluster, Faust, Moebius, Roedelius, Plank, Schickert Schnitzler Tietchens Tyndall. In addition to these reissues, they also release works by similar artists including Blenner Heldon Pinhas Rev or NDW Plan Pyrolator.

With their impressive catalogue and dedication to promoting innovative music across various genres within the electronic spectrum - from pop to avant-garde - Bureau B continues to be a prominent force in the global music industry. Their contributions have solidified them as an authoritative figure in the world of independent labels.

German for "fist", and also the protagonist of Goethe's eponymous play, Faust were among the first bands to use the recording studio as an instrument and one of the originators & central pillars of the Krautrock genre. After two albums for Polydor, they were dropped due to a lack of commercial success and signed with the fledgling Virgin label. The first release to come of this new partnership was The Faust Tapes - a record comprised of edited older material, with no clearly demarcated tracks, and no titles or other information on the sleeve. In what could be seen as an early attempt at viral marketing, the disc was priced as a single and as a result sold over 50,000 copies.
Faust IV was released later the same year, and had been recorded on night shifts at the label's Manor studio while Mike Oldfield tracked Tubular Bells during the day. While the group would carry on for another two years after the release of IV, no new releases appeared before the band seemingly vanished.
Throughout the 1980s, Chris Cutler's ReR and Recommended labels released Faust's first three records along with various unreleased archival material. This marked their creative partnership which would see him go on to perform with Jean-Hervé Peron's later iteration of Faust decades later. In 1994, Faust reactivated; performing live in Europe and releasing

Back In Stock

There's something perversely fabulous about the thought of this warped masterwork wandering into 60,000 unsuspecting British homes in 1973. Faust's second-and-a-half album hit the shops to celebrate their signing to the nascent Virgin Records, who were looking to take advantage of the zeitgeist for German music at that time. Undeterred by the fact the band's unwillingness to engage with the commercial landscape had seen them dropped from Polydor, Branson and co cooked up a suitably spectacular marketing strategy, selling the LP for 49p, the bargain price of a single. Shoppers flocked in their thousands to grab a copy, raced home and then spent the next forty five minutes checking their tracking, banging the speakers and blowing the needle, all to no avail. Do not adjust your set - This is Faust. What was lurking within the grooves was a condensed collage of outtakes, oddities, sketches and samples previously known to the band's nearest and dearest as 'The Faust Party Tapes' - and how you wish you'd been to those parties. Cacophonous keys and roaring drones splinter into a deranged hybrid of tumbling toms and yelping vocals; committed experimentalism which in no way prepares you for the beautiful ballad which follows. Armed with acoustic guitar, playful piano and panning vocals, Faust fashion a pastoral idyll imbued with the most profound yearning. "Flashback Caruso" brims with Byrds-ian jangle and Syd's psychedelia, its non-sensical English lending the piece a Confucian lyricism perfect for expanded minds. And just as the soaring, searing solo suggests we're on route to eternity, the group snap, crackle and pop into another rabid découpage. Sliced and spliced between TV snippets, dissonant trumpet and the sound of someone pissing, the utterly freaky fuzz-rock of "J'ai Mal Aux Dents" sounds positively radio-friendly, far less far out than if it were encountered alone. Compared to the non-musical madness beside it, this thrash-jazz trance dance makes perfect sense, as does the corrosive breakbeat of "Two Drums, Bass, Organ", a mutant funk workout which rivals Can in an all- German dance off. The progressive and symphonic "Dr. Schwitters", dissected by fragments of dissonant process music, haunted vocal takes and the proto-industrial grind of "Elerimomuvid", charts a course for the dark side of the moon more suited to the serious cosmonauts of the world. Then the record freefalls into disorienting drum workouts, mixing desk experiments and a wicked premonition of no-wave jazz ("Hermann's Lament") before taking slight respite in the beauty of "Rudolf Der Pianist" and "I've Heard That One Before". The particles of prepared piano, power tools and tape echo continue to cascade through the soundspace, gradually building into the final trilogy of "Stretch Out Time", "Der Baum" and "Chère Chambre", which return to conventional song structure, albeit in the group's typically twisted style. Once again though, in comparison to the wonderfully weird pieces which precede them, these three tracks are entirely accessible, and in this lies the brilliance of the LP. It doesn't just succeed as a conceptual prank, or musical prediction, but by an expert balancing act between the profane and profound, presents its most accomplished moments in their most intelligible form. For the open minds and eager ears, Faust's cryptic charm had been laid bare, and the heads had a new favourite band. 

The Faust Tapes.

Music GB