The Faust Tapes

Faust were a bunch of scruffy, prankster-minded German art-hippies who lived communally, recorded music near-constantly in their own studio, and had the gall to name themselves after one of the crowning achievements of their nation's cultural history. This "krautrock" act was equally inspired by Frank Zappa, musique concrète composers, and British prog-rockers. Their music is experimental but weirdly accessible, thanks to their uncompromising sense of humor and a heavy emphasis on rhythm. On Faust Tapes you really never know what's going to happen next until you've listened to it so often you memorize it all, like some Monty Python<>/i> skit. A "song" tends to last either thirty seconds or seven and a half minutes, and buzzsaw sounds routinely interrupt dulcet ones. The space jazz becomes shambling acid-folk that runs into creepy-fake world music, which somehow becomes a touching acoustic love song. Almost on the same level as the first two Velvet Underground albums, entire genres were either spawned by or prefigured in Faust's music: industrial, post-rock, darkwave, and maybe even a few yet to be named.