Faust
By All Music Guide
By All Music Guide
Issued on clear vinyl in a transparent sleeve, Fausts eponymously titled debut LP surfaced in 1971. Although sales were notoriously bad, the album -- a noisy sound collage of cut-and-paste musical fragments -- did earn the group a solid cult following. Another lavishly packaged work, Faust So Far, followed in 1972, and earned the group a contract with Virgin, which issued 1973s The Faust Tapes -- a fan-assembled collection of home recordings -- for about the price of a single, a marketing ploy that earned considerable media interest. After Outside the Dream Syndicate, a collaboration with Tony Conrad, Faust released 1973s Faust IV, a commercial failure that resulted in the loss of their contract with Virgin, which refused to release their planned fifth long-player.
When Nettelbeck turned his focus away from the group, Faust disbanded in 1975, and the members scattered throughout Germany. However, after more than a decade of playing together in various incarnations, Faust officially reunited around the nucleus of Irmler, Peron, and Diermaier for a handful of European performances at the outset of the 1990s. In 1993, they made their first-ever U.S. live appearance backing Conrad, followed by a series of other stateside performances. After several live releases, a pair of new studio albums, Rien and You Know FaUSt, followed in 1996. Ravvivando appeared three years later.
