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71 Mins / The Faust Tapes

Mark Paytress

Record Collector, Jul 1996

This pair is being repromoted as part of ReR's 'Classic Series' in the wake of renewed interest in Krautrock prompted by bands like Stereolab and Tortoise and, of course, Julian Cope's passionate book on the subject, Krautrocksampler.

Seventy One Minutes... is based around the Munic and Elsewhere / Return of a Legend album of unreleased material, originally reviewed in these pages back in November 1986. "Enjoy some of the most hypnotic spells conjured up since PIL's 'Metal Box', or the best of This Heat, or even the father of them all, Can's 'Mother Sky'," wrote this enthusiastic rookie. There's no reason to argue with that original assessment, merely to add that now that Faust are infinitely more fashionable, some people might actually rush out and buy the record this time.

The Faust Tapes, like Seventy One Minutes..., has already appeared on CD, and is the single album which did most to implant the seeds of an experimental musical future into the minds of a few hundred influential teenagers back in 1973, thanks to Richard Branson's idea of knocking it out at 49p a copy. The Faust Tapes is Lesson One in the art of deconstruction: sonic disobedience has rarely sounded this thrilling.

Mark Paytress, "71 Mins / The Faust Tapes", Record Collector 1996