Faust IV

Faust open their fourth album by naming the genre itself — a twelve-minute drone called "Krautrock" that swallows a whole side before it lets you breathe.

The joke is that nothing else here obeys that opening's grim patience. "The Sad Skinhead" bounces along on a fake-reggae lilt and cheerful nonsense, as if the same band that just droned you into submission decided pop was the better prank. That whipsaw between the monolithic and the throwaway is Faust refusing to be pinned down even as English critics were busy inventing a tidy label for them. What survives is a record that treats studio and sensibility as toys, and dares you to decide whether the sneer or the beauty is the real one.