The story goes something like this:
In the very early 1970s, the German record label Polydor wanted a new band to rival The Beatles. What they got was Faust, definitely not German Beatles. Faust were one of the leaders of Krautrock, along with Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk and many others.
Faust’s first album (1971) had three tracks, Why Don’t You Eat Carrots?, Meadow Meal and Miss Fortune. The first track begins with clips of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. John Peel loved this album, especially for the see through record, cover and lyric inserts.
We have this disc. It plays well, though the plastic sleeve has had more than fifty years of love.
How do we classify Faust’s music? Well, it is dissonant, often tuneless, rather episodic with sound effects, extracts from the radio… a huge patchwork. That’s not totally fair. On the second album, So Far, there were genuine tunes and the whole thing was more accessible.
But Polydor hated it. Faust signed to Virgin, Richard Branson’s label. They often recorded snippets of songs and bits of noise, and Branson ordered a budget priced compilation of some of these bits and pieces, The Faust Tapes (1973).
This sold very well. Perhaps it was the budget price (49p).
The next album, Faust IV (1973) was recorded relatively conventionally and had some success, but the band split and that was that.