Product Description

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 asTAPES' construction might seem, with an excess of ideas that almost seems to have tumbled out of the Faust 5 at random,one must realise 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 andabrupt 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.

Track Listing

1. Exercise (With Several Hands On A Piano)
2. Exercise (With Voices Drum And Sax)
3. Flashback Caruso
4. Exercise
5. J'ai Mal Aux Dents
6. Untitled
7. Untitled
8. Dr Schwitters
9. Exercise
10. Untitled
11. Untitled
12. Dr Schwitters
13. Untitled
14. Untitled
15. Untitled
16. Untitled
17. Untitled
18. Untitled
19. Untitled
20. Untitled
21. Untitled
22. Untitled
23. Untitled
24. Stretch Out Time
25. Der Baum
26. Chere Chambre

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14548 in Music
• Released on: 2001-12-03
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

Possible Faust's best LP.
I bought this as at 0.49p first time around and was instantly captivated.
I had almost not bothered to buy it because frankly I felt the first LP Faust was a gimmick because of its cover art and continued no music worth bothering with. My feelings towards Faust were changed a lot by the record, which is interesting and charming, containing some worthwhile experiments and even some half decent tunes. To this day I still play this record quite often. In my opinion this is Faust's most consistent LP, it comes close in my mind to Neu's excellent first album. So why might you ask do I not give it five stars? To be honest its down to the relatively poor production and the lo-fi sound. Never the less, if you are at all interested in German rock music you should own this and Neu before you start to delve into the darker and more mysterious bowels of Kruat rock.

Richard Branson's finest hour
I bought this LP when it came out and I have bought it again 6 times subsequently. I currently own 4 copies of it in various formats. It really is that essential !!!


I think the copyright sensitive Bridget Riley is responsible for the less interesting cover that now adorns this masterpiece, but it's the music that counts.

Faust virgins start here
As one of the albums that launched the Virgin label back in 1973, and priced as a loss-leader at 49p, this album briefly put the extremely underground Faust into the public eye (mind you even at 49p it didn't chart...)
In its original incarnation on LP, and even the first CD issue, there was no track listing, or tracks - at least on the LP you had two sides. Now at last you can go to the track you want, which is not necessarily a good thing. Far better to listen to it all the way through and let the very varied individual pieces wash over you. With far more tracks than any other 70s Faust album, nothing lasts too long and you get a good idea of their range - including plangent, slightly odd acoustic ditties, driving rock, musique concrete, dialogue and lots of just unique music. This makes the album a very good place to start if you've not heard Faust before - and essential if you've already heard other Faust albums and liked them.

Though influential, Faust sound like no one before or since - during the period when they recorded this material, Polydor provided them with their own studio (an old school out in the country near Hamburg) and a top notch live-in engineer in the shape of Kurt Graupner, who created unique effects boxes for them and made their numerous sonic experiments possible in much the way as George Martin did for the Beatles. Even at their most abrasive (and they get pretty extreme at times - one sequence on this album features what sounds like a treated electric drill) there's something positive and wholesome about the noises Faust make - they're not trying to hurt you and they're never sick like Throbbing Gristle, and far more listenable for most people - though if you like your music predictable and unchallenging this is not for you.