With the release of 'Faust Demonica', NORMANS present their most refined work to date. The record emphasizes clarity, precision, and atmosphere, pairing polished electronic production with a darker melodic discipline while maintaining the project’s core intensity. Supported by stark visual presentation, NORMANS explore control, latent fear, and psychological pressure, favoring structure and tension over conventional release.

FFO: Depeche Mode, Soft Kill, Killing Joke, Peter Murphy, The KVB

TRACK LISTING

1. Mexico Unlimited
2. Destruction
3. Gold
4. Faust Demonica
5. Broken Moon
6. Riding Horses In Hell
7. Urge To Merge
8. The Magic Touch
9. Ankle Biter

'So Far’, so far out. By 1972, Faust had already dismantled the concept of a rock album. With their self-titled debut, they tore through convention with tape edits, abstract structures, and a scathing collage of cultural detritus. Its successor, recorded just six months later, was not a retreat from that radicalism, but its evolution. Instead of challenging form through outright fragmentation, the band now disguised their subversion in structures that almost, almost, resemble songs. But don’t be fooled. This is still Faust: unpredictable, subversive, and unbound by convention.

The circumstances surrounding the album’s creation were no less unconventional than those of their debut. Faust were still ensconced in the converted schoolhouse in Wümme, Lower Saxony, and its improvised studio - a riddle of cabling, tape and custom electronics. By this point, the band had grown more cohesive as a unit but remained steadfastly anti-commercial, despite the pleas of their label.

'It’s A Rainy Day Sunshine Girl' sets the tone, sixteen bars of primal percussion exploding into a relentless rhythmic mantra, somewhere between a ritual and a rave-up. Sosna’s deadpan vocals and skeletal guitar, Diermaier’s thudding pulse, and Peron’s circular bassline create a mood both hypnotic and unsettling, on a track which feels as if it was beamed in from both the Velvet Underground’s New York loft and the outer edges of the Zodiak Free Arts Lab. The song’s descent into a howling maelstrom of Irmler’s droning organ and Wüsthoff’s screaming sax captures Faust’s unique balance of chaos and clarity. Through its taut two and a half minutes of folky finger picking and icy electronics, 'On the Way to Abamäe' oscillates between pastoral prettiness and gloomy paranoia while 'No Harm' sets a new standard for tone shift. Muted horns and swaying syncopation, gradually joined by bass and organ, build into a pensive wave of orchestral heft, cresting into a bruised and bluesy vision of tender Germanicana, which is quickly cast aside in favour all out freak-funk. It’s the kind of acid overload which would leave today’s microdosers a quivering wreck, but in the hands of Faust finds the sweet-spot of spectral joy, where mind expanding magic never quite takes you to the point of madness.

The madness soon comes, taking the form of the overlapped, unhinged and tape-chewed slide guitar which introduces the irresistible psych groove of the title track. Driven by the syncopated repetition of a jazzy rhythm section, punctuated by staccato horns, and topped with all kinds of swirling, swooning electronics and vox, 'So Far' is arguably the most catchy moment in the Faust Oeuvre. 'Mamie Is Blue' pivots sharply into proto-industrial terrain, prefiguring post-punk’s darkest urges by nearly a decade, while 'I’ve Got My Car and My TV' is pure Dada, with radio static, voice fragments, and machine-like repetition coalescing into a media-age mantra of alienation. Brief and baffling interludes 'Picnic On A Frozen River' and 'Me Lack Space' dial up the disorientation before 'Put On Your Socks' closes out the set with a foray into swing and ragtime, refracted through that particularly Faustian prism.

Taken as a whole, ‘So Far’ is less a linear progression from Faust’s debut than a sideways leap into a parallel sonic dimension. Where the first album exploded rock from the inside out, ‘So Far’ rearranges the wreckage into strange new shapes. There’s a sly humour here too, buried under the fuzz and tape edits, a knowing wink that these sonic detours aren’t acts of nihilism, but of creation. Faust were building something. What, exactly, remains elusive, and still utterly intoxicating.

TRACK LISTING

1. It's A Rainy Day Sunshine Girl
2. On The Way To Abamäe
3. No Harm
4. So Far
5. Mamie Is Blue
6. I've Got My Car And MyTV
7. Picnic On A Frozen River
8. Me Lack Space…
9. …In The Spirit

By 1973, Faust had already rewired the circuits of German rock. Their first two albums had exploded traditional song form with a joyous disregard for continuity, coherence, or commercial appeal. 'The Faust Tapes', released earlier that year for 49p as a surreal sampler of their cut-and-paste genius, had earned them a curious British audience and the indulgence of Virgin Records. For a brief moment, it seemed as though Faust might finally play the game, just a little. What emerged instead was 'Faust IV', their most paradoxical work: accessible enough to lure listeners in, complex enough to keep them guessing.

For the first time, the band left the rustic headquarters in Wümme, a former schoolhouse in rural Lower Saxony, stuffed with cabling, hand-built electronics, and limitless weed, and entered the professional confines of The Manor, Virgin’s newly christened studio in Oxfordshire. Gone was the radical freedom of the commune. In its place: deadlines, engineers, and a rapidly dwindling budget. The sessions stretched on and grew increasingly fraught, yielding a mixture of fresh material and fragments drawn in from earlier experiments in Wümme. 'Faust IV' is the result: part studio artefact, part salvage operation, part séance.

Tongues deeply in cheek or else aimed squarely at the British music press responsible for the reductive term, Faust open this oeuvre with 'Krautrock'. Over eleven minutes, Faust lay down insistent sequencers, seesawing guitars and subterranean fuzz, slowly building before erupting into the funkiest motorik imaginable, fizzing with smart syncopation, fills and accents. Though the track is a titular parody of a sonic stereotype, Faust’s version has far more texture and technique than the rest of the pack. 'The Sad Skinhead' enters with a gleeful shout and settles into a bizarre reggae lurch, complete with marimba plinks and arch lyrics about heartbreak and hairstyle, which skirt the surreal in typically Faustian fashion. Squint your ears and it’s almost three minute pop perfection. Almost. That same tension animates much of the album: a shrugging flirtation with form, always undercut by whimsy or abrasion. 'Jennifer', perhaps the band’s most beautiful creation, floats on pulsing bass and delicate guitar, a dream-pop prototype two decades ahead of schedule. It mutates as it plays, descending into feedback and eventually collapsing into a broken piano jig, as if self-conscious of its own beauty.

The B-side trades coherence for combustion. 'Just A Second (Starts Like That!)' is all twitching electronics and FX-laden riffage, spiralling into a surreal chamber of wah pedals and pastoral keys. 'Picnic on a Frozen River, Deuxième Tableaux' offers some of Faust’s jazziest interplay, bass nimble, sax carefree, before taking a hard swerve into proto-funk and chaotic organ. 'Giggy Smile' opens mid-conversation and dissolves into Francophone acid folk, while 'Lauft… Heisst Das Es Läuft Oder Es Kommt Bald… Läuft' sees a contemplative organ grow ever more resonant across its run-time, double tracking and reverb seeing it snaking through the long grass of the stereo field. Then comes the sting in the tail: 'It’s A Bit of a Pain', the album’s closer and its emotional knot. A hushed acoustic ballad soon ruptured by fizzing electronics and Swedish monologues, it’s half Stones-y love song, half electro-acoustic prank, a fitting send off to this head-spinning listen.

'Faust IV' is uneven, restless, and full of contradictions, and that’s exactly what makes it compelling. Its rough edges and loose threads sit right alongside moments of real focus, giving the sense of a band following ideas wherever they lead. Rather than polish things smooth, Faust left the seams visible, and the result feels all the more vital for it. Nearly half a century on, its spirit remains intact: mischievous, mysterious, and gloriously unfinished. If Faust had set out to build a new language, 'Faust IV' shows them mid-sentence, trailing off, cracking jokes, then suddenly profound. Don’t expect to follow the conversation, just keep listening.

TRACK LISTING

1. Krautrock
2. The Sad Skinhead
3. Jennifer
4. Just A Second / Picnic On A Frozen River, Deuxième Tableau
5. Giggy Smile
6. Läuft… Heisst Das, Es Läuft Oder Es Kommt Bald?… Läuft!
7. It's A Bit Of A Pain

Few debut albums arrive with the kind of self-contained logic and radical spirit found on the self titled ‘Faust’. Released in 1971, it marked the beginning of a project that would sidestep genre and expectation, offering a fractured, exploratory take on rock music, blending tape experiments, improvised structures, and surreal collage. This Bureau B reissue offers a fresh opportunity to engage with one of the most curious and uncompromising records of its time.

The story of Faust begins in 1969, when cultural journalist Uwe Nettelbeck met with Horst Schmolzi, an A&R man at Polydor in Hamburg. Schmolzi was looking for a German answer to The Beatles, but Nettelbeck had other ideas. With a generous advance in hand, he set out to assemble something far more radical. Nettlebeck headed into the Hamburg underground and fused members of the bands Nukleus and Campylognatus Citelli into a new six-piece lineup. From Nukleus came bassist Jean-Hervé Péron, guitarist Rudolf Sosna, and saxophonist Gunther Wüsthoff. From Campylognatus Citelli, he brought in keyboardist Hans-Joachim Irmler and drummers Werner “Zappi” Diermaier and Arnulf Meifert.

Installed in a converted schoolhouse in the rural village of Wümme, Lower Saxony, the band lived and worked communally, while Nettelbeck oversaw the project as producer, alongside engineer Kurt Graupner. Much of the Polydor money went not into marketing, but into building a custom studio on-site, allowing the band complete creative autonomy. Extensive cabling allowed instruments to be played without needing to leave the bedroom, clothing was optional and intoxicants were abundant. The actual recording process didn’t begin until three days before the deadline, and what followed was a spontaneous burst of experimental creativity, equal parts anarchic and inspired. Remarkably, the resulting album doesn’t sound rushed. On the contrary, ‘Faust’ feels deliberate in its unpredictability: a meticulously chaotic document of six musicians discovering a new musical language in real time.

The trip begins with “Why Don’t You Eat Carrots,” a collage of absurdist theatre and sound sculpture. Its snarling guitar feedback, shuddering electronics and tape-scratched pop samples mutate into a post-structuralist meltdown. Stones’ “Satisfaction” and Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love” are reduced to spectral phrases, mocking the very idea of cultural consensus. From there horns squeal, pianos splinter and voices swirl in delay, as if the entirety of a circus is being squeezed through the hoop of a bubble blower, leaving us to watch the whole spectacle bend, shake and shimmer in the sunlight. Next, “Meadow Meal” opens with resonant industrial tones, like air forced through plumbing, and gradually blossoms into a surrealist jazz-folk ritual. Fingerpicked guitar cohabits with blasts of reverb-heavy organ and beat-poet vocal incantations. At its heart lies a groove so deep and syncopated it borders on funk, only to collapse into chaos once more. And then there is “Miss Fortune”, a 16-minute live improvisation soaked in hashish and reverb. One-note bass lines throb like minimalist mantras beneath swirling organs and mutant sax. Drums stutter toward cohesion and then back away in terror. Guitars unravel into smoke. And in the final moments, the music recedes, leaving behind a broken narrative, fragmented speech, laughter, coughs, like a bedtime story told by ghosts of a Europe still recovering from war.

Despite the experimental nature, surrealist lyrics and a complete rejection of conventional music form, this isn’t an over intellectual exercise, or a display of wilful antagonism. Instead, Faust packed these three sprawling, sputtering pieces with the breadth of human emotion, capturing the chaos and complexity of existence in an audio analogue to Jackson Pollock’s abstract expressionism. More than 50 years on, it remains a thrilling reminder of what can happen when artists abandon the map and follow instinct instead.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Why Don't You Eat Carrots?
A2 Meadow Meal
B1 Miss Fortune

After dipping into the archive to deliver a series of essential reissues, Bureau B continue to encourage the chaotic brilliance of Faust with an LP of brand new music curated by originator Zappi Diermaier and a band of musical friends, including fellow founder Gunther Wüsthoff. Over the years Faust has become many things, each as separate as the fingers, but as together as the hand which makes up their eponymous fist. From 1971 to 1974 the Hamburg band blazed a bold sonic trail, helping to create the distinct and delirious strand of German music we've come to know as Krautrock. Uncompromising, innovative and experimental, their releases in that period, and the stories accompanying their creation, are nothing short of legendary, and the fact that after a hiatus, the band returned and remained active in a variety of separate and simultaneous incarnations is entirely fitting for these musical revolutionaries. On Blickwinkel, Diermaier's incarnation embrace synchronicity and chance in order to capture the moment in a six track snapshot of industrial churn, unsettling ambience and psychedelic motorik.

Sonically and politically, Blickwinkel is a profoundly Faustian venture, a communal project based on democratic ideals which eschews external influences to create something entirely out on its own. As with the previous LP, Daumenbruch, the journey started with Zappi behind a drum kit at the home studio of his neighbour Dirk Dresselhaus AKA Schneider TM (bass), alongside electronics whizz Elke Drapatz (drum effects). The trio embarked on a session of instant composition, playing wordlessly with a deep empathy to each other as well as the energy in the room. While the Daumenbruch session, which took place in the midst of lockdown, delivered three long-form pieces, this two hour spell served up six diverse tracks, an audio analogue for the speed of life post-lockdown. These considered and complex creations, as far from simple jams as it gets, were mixed by Dirk in a third hour, and then sent off to a varied cast of collaborators, each adding their overdubs independently with no knowledge of what the others were doing.

These contributions came via a multidisciplinary melange of approaches and instruments including Gunther Wusthoff's Spieluhr (a sequencer unit he built for his ARP synth back in the early 1970s) and Andrew Unruh's percussive objects; the guitar, kalimba and harmonium of Jochen Arbeit (all twisted through an fx unit, naturally) and Sonja Kosche's inventive use of a harp fashioned out of the wires of a bed and a ventilator. Drones, delays, clatter and clang came from all corners - in fact, only Uwe Bastiansen (Stadtfisch) added melodies, lending long distance support to Dirk Dresselhaus' insistent bass sequences, and channeling the magic of their moment into potent pagan tonalities. Despite their differing practices and processes, these musicians all have a long history together, and their free association produced unexpected outcomes which were embraced by Zappi and Dirk when it came to reassemblage. Dismissing veto power as the height of neo-liberal bullshit, they chose to keep more or less all the overdubs on the album, harnessing the power of arrangement and the mixing desk to fuse all these assorted elements into the impactful entities you hear on Blickwinkel.

The result is a shapeshifter, at times commune friendly psychedelia, then grinding industrial, eerie ambient or driving motorik, but always refusing easy categorisation. The stylistic definitions are constantly disrupted by unexpected guests - baroque strings, impish horns, found sound breakdowns, or else mind melting phasing and flanging - each offering a new combination on this

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: You know you're always in for a winner with a Bureau B release, and this time sees the turn of legendary Krautrockers, Faust. Zappi Diermaier and a host of collaborators smash through a selection of wild psychedelic grooves and insistent hypnotic jangles. Brilliantly done, as ever.

TRACK LISTING

A1 For Schlaghammer
A2 Künstliche Intelligenz
A3 Sunny Night
B1 Kriminelle Kur
B2 Die 5. Revolution
B3 Kratie

Originally part of 2021’s Faust Box Set release commemorating the bands 50th anniversary Momentaufnahme I and II are now set for their own stand alone release by popular demand. This is for all those that missed out on the limited edition box set release. They collect together music recorded at the band's studio - a converted schoolhouse in rural Wümme between 1971 and 1974 in a similar vein to the way in which 'The Faust Tapes’ (released in 1973) was assembled. These two albums range from minimal electronic pulses, ambient dreamscapes, vocal collages to heavy drone, ritualistic percussion and psychedelic grooves. Highlights include the hypnotic space jams of ‘Vorsatz’ and ‘Rückwärts Durch Die Drehtür’, the delicate acoustics of ‘I Am… An Artist' and the radiophonic workship-esq 'Weird Sounds Sound Bizarre‘.

Let’s let founding member Jean-Hervé Peron explain more…. Faust were originally a group of musicians, each following our own inspirations, desires, illusions: many facets, many directions, different styles, different languages. We often had to struggle with the clash of our egos but there was also a natural tacit understanding of each other's role. We had the privilege to work with a great producer and an extraordinary recording engineer. From spring 1971 to spring 1974 we existed as a group. Then Faust became a Gestalt with various incarnations. Momentaufnahme? Don't panic here, it is only German for 'Snapshot’. Momentaufnahme I and II present a collection of unreleased snapshots which offer a wonderful insight into the world of Faust. Some tracks are extremely raw and experimental, others are fully rounded productions. So far we have MA I and MA II but we plan to do more of these when we come up with more material or new ideas.

TRACK LISTING

01. Naja
02. Flaflas
03. Es Ist Wieder Da
04. Mechanika
05. Weird Sounds Sound Bizarre
06. Karotten
07. RéMaj7
08. Fin De Face
09. Vorsatz
10. Acouphènes
11. Interlude 18. Juni
12. Dadalibal
13. Bonne Soupe Au Fromage
14. Rückwärts Durch Die Drehtür

After the overwhelming success of last years 1971-74 box set release, containing the first four studio albums and for the first time ever this lost 'last' album recording, 'Punkt' gets a deserved and necessary stand alone release to the relief of fans and collectors and the undoubted future gratification of those yet to experience the magic in these recordings.

'While working on the "lost" album which the band recorded in Munich, it became clear that I was listening to the last ever made recordings of this band lineup. It had been their attempt to release another album, which did not happen for several reasons. After this Munich session every band member focused on other things.So this was the end of Faust. No further recordings, no shows. Punkt. Which means "full stop" in German and has "punk" in it as well. An attitude which the band or at least some of the members certainly approved'. Gunther Buskies - bureau b

The band called it 5½, fans referred to it as the "Munich album" and for almost fifty years it's been the missing chapter in Faustian mythology. Now for the first time, the German iconoclasts' previously unreleased fifth album sees the light of day as Punkt. Not only does this title place a bold full stop after the final recording by the group's seminal line up of Péron, Irmler, Sosna, Wüsthoff and Diermaier, but it also references the unflinching anarchism of German rock's ultimate outsiders. Punktis Faust at their most unhindered, untethered and unstoppable.

Returning to Germany after a loss-making U.K. tour and after their manager Uwe Nettelbeck had split with them,the group dusted themselves down and planned their next project, what would have been their second for Richard Branson's Virgin. Joined as always by their engineering genius Kurt Graupner, the band took residence in the Arabella High Rise Building, the luxury hotel which housed Giorgio Moroder's Musicland Studio in its basement. At the time, the Italian's space disco odyssey was yet to blast off, and he gave the group the studio downtime around his sessions with Donna Summer.

Off the leash and on the lash (running up a record breaking room service bill), Faust spent their nights below ground, creating the sublime cacophony which courses through these seven tracks. Driven by Diermaier's primitive repetition and Péron's rabid low end growl, "Morning Land" stomps its way through almost ten minutes of heavy psychedelia. Vocals disintegrate into the sonic landslide of guitar feedback and synth scree, momentum building until the track rends open the hellmouth with its unthinkable heft. A Luciferian spirit courses through the beatless "Crapolino", a tumult of scorched guitar chords, strident FXs and disembodied vocals which bares all the hallmarks of a black mass. And just like that, the group summon some demonic hunting party for "Knochentanz" (bone dance), arguably their most immersive creation. Opening with Péron's plangent horn, the track soon establishes a hypnotic c ounterpoint between Irmler's electronic sequences and Diermaier's sparse rhythm, a pulse which continues to build for six minutes as kick drum, snare, shaker and toms pile on beneath the ever-present drone. The storm clears for a second to allow a celestial chord progression to emerge from the darkness before the heavens open and Sosna's snarling, sawing guitar rains down from above, carrying "Knochentanz" through its final iteration, a collision of muscular fretwork, percussion freakout and bleeping organ which completes the most psychedelic recording you've never heard.

The frazzled optimism of "Fernlicht" buzzes away like an acid Beethoven bathed in neons, before the breathless "Juggernaut" stretches the definition of blues rock to its limit as squirming sine waves, clattering cymbals and corrosive guitars pan, reverse and overlap, each following its own unhinged rhythm. Then for a time the sound and the fury abate, making space for the frankly sublime "Schön Rund", a piano-led diversion into the soul-swelling realms of ECM jazz and fin de siècleimpressionism, which rivals anything else in their catalogue for pure beauty. And in case you thought they'd gone soft, Faust sign off with the guttural groans and course drones of "Prends Ton Temps".

After ten days of recording, it became clear that Branson wasn't footing the bill and Péron, Irmler and Sosna were arrested until the mothers of Sosna and Irmler paid the bill - though not before smuggling the master tapes into an undisclosed location, where they've waited ever since...

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: This final 'Lost' article from the Faust pentalogy sees the German experimental powerhouse in fine form, wildly swaying between avant jazz, lounge funk and krautrock in a musically surprising triumph. Bonkers and brilliant.

TRACK LISTING

1. Morning Land

2. Crapolino

3. Knochentanz

4. Fernlicht

5. Juggernaut

6. Schön Rund

7. Prends Ton Temps