Saturday, September 30, 2006

Faust : V

In 1974, totally stressed out by the tiresome touring & general 'rock lifestyle' their signing with Virgin brought upon them, Faust took a one-year sabbatical to lick their wounds & regroup. In 1975 they gathered in Munich to record material for their next Virgin album. Or they thought so. Virgin by then didn't want to have anything with these troublemakers & cut the money flow. The group even ended up in jail (a first hand account can be read at the Wfmu's, also at the most excellent Faust site) and subsequently fell apart. So, there was no fifth album. But the advance promo tapes came out and that's what we have today as evidence of this great 'lost' album. And it's great, indeed. It's a shame this didn't came out as a proper release, for i think that it would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the first two classic Faust albums. Anyway. There are several versions of this tape in circulation, this one i choosed to put up here for you is the basic promo-tape extended with some more material from the same sessions. About half of this was released in the late eighties by Recommended as part of the 'Munich & Elsewhere' compilation. Here is the whole thing, and more.
After an early-90's reunion, Faust is still active and making great music. In fact, so active that today there are two 'versions' of Faust, both led by core-members, that peacefuly coexist. They were always unique...
Picture: Faust in London's Covent Garden circa 1972/73 with Peter Blegvad & Uli Trepte. Watch out for the forthcoming book!

V

10 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

this is astonishing -- never even knew this existed. part of me even wanted to take the .jpg scan of the virgin tapes cassette insert for a fake, but then I heard the mp3's

these are different mixes of the tracks that did make it to 'munic and elsewhere', and _very_ different mixes of the debris that eventually made it onto 'bbc sessions +', as well as some additional extremely raw moments that haven't been officially released anywhere.

I have questions -- what, _exactly_, was released on the original cassette? and you mention other versions of 'faust v' online -- what additional material do they contain? there's some anthropology to be done -- thanks so much for making this available, though, I'm wary of posting albums that are easily purchased online but things like this make me grateful for the internet

4:47 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It was great to hear this after hearing the story of how these recordings landed several of the members in jail...

11:34 PM  
Blogger Mirco said...

A million thanks for this buried treasure!

5:13 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

this is truly amazing! thank you.

6:23 PM  
Blogger Curved Air said...

(bows) thank you, thank you, thank you Mended...not an easy find.

10:48 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

A truly magnificent post, thank you from an original Faust fan....... :-)

4:23 AM  
Anonymous cialis generic said...

Thank You a ton for writing such a wonderful piece of information. Keep sharing such ideas in the future as well. This was actually what I was looking for, and I am glad to came here! Thanks for sharing the such information with us.

1:01 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wow. Thanks!

12:18 PM  
Blogger achtungmark said...

Hi, thanks for the info and for the post, could you please repost a link to V, since the link is now dead. Big thanks, Mark.

12:49 PM  
Blogger rz said...

link working as of today!
rz

9:41 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home