Faust – Faust

Faust is the debut album by the German experimental group Faust, released in 1971 on Polydor. Recorded in their rural Wümme studio under producer Uwe Nettelbeck, the album pushes rock far beyond its traditional boundaries, blending improvisation, musique concrète, tape experiments, and surreal humor into three long tracks: Why Don’t You Eat Carrots?, Meadow Meal, and Miss Fortune. It stands as one of the cornerstones of krautrock, a record that thrives on disruption, unpredictability, and radical sound collage.

Though not commercially successful on release, Faust has become revered as a daring and influential work in experimental rock. Its mix of noise, pastoral passages, fractured song structures, and studio trickery defied expectations of what an album could be, inspiring generations of avant-garde and post-rock musicians. Today it remains a vital listen for anyone interested in the possibilities of sound outside mainstream forms.

Reviews

“Meadow Meal, lurching from pastoral guitar to barrages of black noise to modified, drenching organ tones and the free-ranging Miss Fortune, which takes up all of side two, still sound astonishing today; anyone who thinks Krautrock is merely about the 4/4 Dingerbeat should be whacked over the head with a copy of this album.” — Classic Rock

“Faust: Faust Vinyl reissue of Krautrock legends’ 1971 debut album … Meadow Meal, lurching from pastoral guitar to barrages of black noise … still sound astonishing today…” — Louder