Send "Faust " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 The latest album from mythical Krautrock group Faust is a sprawling beast that is hard to scrutinize. Faust, in typical complexity, leaves little foothold for the casual listener. With 22 songs that together last over an hour and half, this album demands multiple listens before it even begins to reveal its structure. To categorize the album, one might try to split it into twos. The songs veer from one pole to another; from instrumental non-traditional pieces to song-based garage rockers; from soft ambient tones to harsh noise; from guitar-led songs to synth-driven ones; from songs with traditional rock-style drumbeats to songs that seem about to split their seams rhythmically; and so on. Even after dividing the album into recognizable categories, repeat listening doesn’t necessarily reveal its cohesion.Melodic ideas do return throughout the album and give it some cyclical movement. The first track, “Brumm und Blech”, with its trilling guitar lines that call to mind a more contained version of the Hendrix from Axis and its organ melody that quietly asserts itself at the beginning and end, finds a reprise near the end of the album in “SofTones” (a literal description of what the song is giving us). The two most classifiable songs, “Hit Me” and “I Don’t Buy Your Shit No More”, which both feature vocals that repeat the song titles throughout, sound like they were hammered out in the same garage. Yet repeating moments do not interfere with the album’s overall forward-moving arc. What Faust has over the many younger bands that cite them as an influence is an aptitude for improvisation. Most Krautrock-inspired bands can pull off the drone aspect of the genre but leave out the excitement of innovation. That’s why live shows of present-day Krautrock descendants can be incredibly boring. They can do nothing but what they’ve already done on the album. Faust plays unexpected notes and puts in random sounds. Even more than instrumental improvisation, Faust excels in compositional innovation. It is this strength that gives the album a kind of linear development and makes it so hard to recap. The songs are often so idea-driven that they leave a strange impression....full text |
| Dustedmagazine |
| This double disc is supposedly Faust’s last. Presumably, that means it’s the final album featuring the Faust led by original keyboardist Hans Joachim Irmler, the band on display on Faust is Last. The fragmentation of the original Faust into two working entities is a sad bit of history that won’t be rehearsed in this context (click here instead), but it means that both Fausts exhibit characteristics of the original group. Irmler’s Faust’s strength lies in the manipulation of “abstract” sonic detail; their last studio album, 1999’s Ravivando, was a firestorm of dense and blazing riffage topped with transparent keyboard swirl. Last pushes further at similar timbral borders with often satisfying results. The first disc is a well-programmed and mostly seamless series of brief excursions, beginning with the eerily droning “Brumm und Blech.” As with most Faust material, individual identities are purposely merged, but Irmler’s keyboards and Lars Paukstat’s tinkling percussion encircle a mélange of less distinct sounds. The disc concludes with the gospel-tinged “Day Out,” sung by Paukstat in the bare-bones piano and organ-drenched soulful manner of later Talk Talk. Contrast these transparent intricacies with the blindingly loud static 30 seconds of “Cluster Fur Cluster” to get an idea of the album’s extremes. Inhabiting a middle ground are groove-laden tracks like “Feed the Greed,” its deep resonances and tiny utterances placed in stark relief by Jan Fride’s heavily distorted drumming....full text |
| Nme |
| Now with just one original member remaining, it seems a fitting time for these krautrock legends to be releasing their final album. It’s a shame, though, because one of the founders of industrial music have still got it. The first CD here (‘A’) shows off their more extreme side, with junkyard drums and obnoxious fuzzed-out guitar reminiscent of their 1973 masterpiece ‘The Faust Tapes’. Disc ‘Z’, meanwhile, is more subdued – all showing their continued influence on the new breed of bands, such as Factory Floor. Capturing the sound of your youth when you’re middle-aged is risky, but there’s nothing to be embarrassed about here – Faust’s legacy is safe....full text |
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