Faust
Faust IV [Remastered]

The Kraut directly at your home*

The Faust myth is revived in the third millennium. It is Virgin that digs through the rich archives for known and unreleased material from the group that glorified the German Kraut-Rock of the '70s: the English label, with which Irmler and associates collaborated for the unfortunate edition of "Faust IV" in 1974, brings back to the attention of an audience still niche the remastered and curated version of the fourth chapter of the Faustian saga; Kraut-Rock is finally a mass phenomenon. The edition, in two rich CDs, resurrects from the dust the peculiarities of one of the most brilliant groups in the history of rock; "Faust IV" is not a casual choice in the operation of reviving the German myth: a timeless product that perfectly sounds like a record from the seventies, eighties, nineties, and our days.

The first CD is the revised and remastered version of the original release from thirty years ago: in it, Virgin proposes, in addition to the necessary revision of the sound, a general recomposition of the album's track-list: it finally restores dignity to that "Giggy Smile" which in the original release appears under the name of "Picnic On A Frozen River", assigns the latter description as an alternate title to the psychedelic painting of "Just A Second (Starts Like That!)", merges "Lauft... Heisst Das es Lauft Oder es Kommt Bald... Lauft" with the three minutes of "Run" not mentioned in the original version. The result is an ensemble of forty-five anthology minutes, forty-five minutes suspended between the rough psychedelia of "Krautrock" and "Just A Second (Starts Like That!)", the lo-fi-ballads of "It's A Bit Of Pain", "Lauft... Heisst Das es Lauft Oder es Kommt Bald... Lauft" and "Jennifer" ("The lowest point of the Faustian depression", P. Scaruffi), the frantic progressive tricks of "The Sad Skinhead" and "Giggy Smile".

The second CD instead proposes unreleased material and taken from the legendary sessions for the John Peel's Radio One Show in 1973: part of this sequence is the original version of "Krautrock", the syncopated free-jazz of "The Lurcher" and the divertissement à la "The Sad Skinhead" of "Do So". From the rehearsal session in the recording studio are the alternative versions of "Jennifer" (drier and shorter), "The Sad Skinhead", "Just A Second (Starts Like That!)" (extended version), "Lauft... Heisst Das es Lauft Oder es Kommt Bald... Lauft" and "Giggy Smile" (also shorter and more linear). Included in the cauldron is the ecstatic minimal ambient of "Piano Piece", an unmissable gem for a work of Faustian reconstruction that hides unexpected small jewels in the B-tapes.

In the booklet, interesting anecdotes related to Faust of the early 70s: the violent debut with "Faust" in 1971, the "Wumme Years", the birth of the fourth Faust.

A must-have. Without reservations.

*This review is purely promotional of the product: for critical notes on the content, refer to the revision by Northernsky on the original release already present on the site.