So Far (Vinyl) - By: Faust - Model Number: BB493LP

Description

˜So Far™, so far out. By 1972, Faust had already dismantled the concept of a rock album. With their self-titled
debut, they tore through convention with tape edits, abstract structures, and a scathing collage of cultural
detritus. Its successor, recorded just six months later, was not a retreat from that radicalism, but its evolution.
Instead of challenging form through outright fragmentation, the band now disguised their subversion in
structures that almost, almost, resemble songs. But don™t be fooled. This is still Faust: unpredictable,
subversive, and unbound by convention.

The circumstances surrounding the album™s creation were no less unconventional than those of their debut. Faust
were still ensconced in the converted schoolhouse in Wümme, Lower Saxony, and its improvised studio - a riddle of cabling, tape and custom electronics. By this point, the band had grown more cohesive as a unit but remained
steadfastly anti-commercial, despite the pleas of their label.
It™s A Rainy Day Sunshine Girl sets the tone, sixteen bars of primal percussion exploding into a relentless rhythmic mantra, somewhere between a ritual and a rave-up. Sosna™s deadpan vocals and skeletal guitar, Diermaier™s thudding pulse, and Peron™s circular bassline create a mood both hypnotic and unsettling, on a track which feels as if it was beamed in from both the Velvet Underground™s New York loft and the outer edges of the Zodiak Free Arts Lab.
The song™s descent into a howling maelstrom of Irmler™s droning organ and Wüsthoff™s screaming sax captures
Faust™s unique balance of chaos and clarity. Through its taut two and a half minutes of folky finger picking and icy
electronics, On the Way to Abamäe oscillates between pastoral prettiness and gloomy paranoia while No Harm sets a new standard for tone shift. Muted horns and swaying syncopation, gradually joined by bass and organ, build into a pensive wave of orchestral heft, cresting into a bruised and bluesy vision of tender Germanicana, which is quickly cast aside in favour all out freak-funk. It™s the kind of acid overload which would leave today™s microdosers a quivering wreck, but in the hands of Faust finds the sweet-spot of spectral joy, where mind expanding magic never quite takes you to the point of madness.
The madness soon comes, taking the form of the overlapped, unhinged and tape-chewed slide guitar which
introduces the irresistible psych groove of the title track. Driven by the syncopated repetition of a jazzy rhythm
section, punctuated by staccato horns, and topped with all kinds of swirling, swooning electronics and vox, So Far is arguably the most catchy moment in the Faust Oeuvre. Mamie Is Blue pivots sharply into proto-industrial terrain, prefiguring post-punk™s darkest urges by nearly a decade, while I™ve Got My Car and My TV is pure Dada, with radio static, voice fragments, and machine-like repetition coalescing into a media-age mantra of alienation. Brief and baffling interludes Picnic On A Frozen River and Me Lack Space dial up the disorientation before Put On Your Socks closes out the set with a foray into swing and ragtime, refracted through that particularly Faustian prism.
Taken as a whole, ˜So Far™ is less a linear progression from Faust™s debut than a sideways leap into a parallel sonic
dimension. Where the first album exploded rock from the inside out, ˜So Far™ rearranges the wreckage into strange
new shapes. There™s a sly humour here too, buried under the fuzz and tape edits, a knowing wink that these sonic
detours aren™t acts of nihilism, but of creation. Faust were building something. What, exactly, remains elusive, and
still utterly intoxicating.

Label
Bureau

Tracks & Genre

SOUTHBOUND