The record
At a glance
- Artist
- Faust
- Released
- 1972
- Album
- Second studio album
- Original tracks
- Nine
- Label
- Polydor 2310 196
- Producer
- Uwe Nettelbeck
Why it matters
Faust discovers the radical almost-song
So Far proves that Faust did not need the debut's constant hard-cut collage to remain disruptive. It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl uses an elementary pulse and repeated title line for more than seven minutes, allowing tiny changes in emphasis to become the composition. No Harm begins with extended vocal-rock tension before collapsing into one of the album's most forceful repeated figures. The title track and Mamie Is Blue place groove, organ, guitar and studio treatment into forms that feel nearly familiar but never conventionally resolved.
Very short pieces on side two interrupt those larger structures, preventing the album from settling into a sequence of standardized songs. The five-person lineup sounds more focused than the debut configuration, while Nettelbeck and Graupner continue to treat recording decisions as part of authorship. Its black package and separate visual prints reverse the transparency of Faust: the second album conceals its object, then unfolds into multiple autonomous images. So Far matters because it makes accessibility a material to manipulate, not a surrender of the collective's experimental method.
Wümme 1972
Six months after the transparent debut
Faust remained at the residential Wümme studio after the 1971 debut, still supported by Polydor and working with producer Uwe Nettelbeck and engineer Kurt Graupner. Arnulf Meifert was no longer part of the regular album lineup, leaving Diermaier, Irmler, Péron, Sosna and Wüsthoff as the documented five-person group. The debut had used three large constructions and a transparent X-ray package but failed to meet Polydor's commercial expectations. So Far was recorded only months later and offered nine separately titled pieces, a surface indication of greater conventionality.
The change was real but limited: several tracks use repeated vocal lines, steady rhythm or recognizable riff construction, while others last less than three minutes or behave like fragments. Wümme still allowed the musicians to develop sound without ordinary hired-studio time pressure. Polydor released the album in 1972 as 2310 196, with three tracks on side one and six on side two. The label relationship continued into the Tony Conrad collaboration before Faust moved toward Virgin and the British breakthrough of The Faust Tapes.
Five musicians
A five-person band inside the Wümme apparatus
Diermaier's drumming is deliberately economical on Rainy Day, where an unwavering basic pattern turns duration into a test of attention. Irmler's organ supplies both warm sustained harmony and abrasive electronic-feeling pressure, especially when processing obscures the keyboard's natural attack. Péron's bass and vocal presence anchors No Harm's transformation from loose declaration into collective drive. Sosna's guitar and keyboards help create the album's unusual melancholy, allowing simple material to remain emotionally direct even when form becomes strange.
Wüsthoff's saxophone and electronics broaden the title track and shorter instrumentals without turning them into conventional jazz arrangements. The five musicians share the Faust identity across the programme, while individual song-credit traditions vary among editions and databases. Nettelbeck and Graupner preserve the Wümme method but apply it with more restraint: fewer edits can make one distortion, entrance or dropout proportionally larger. Köchl's package role connects the audible series of distinct pieces to a set of individual visual works.
Almost songs
Repetition, restraint and controlled sabotage
The opening track makes a steady tom-and-keyboard pulse feel both comforting and uncanny by refusing the normal reward of harmonic development. Vocals are often limited to short repeated phrases, so language behaves rhythmically and conceptually rather than carrying a detailed lyric narrative. On the Way to Abamäe compresses movement into a brief instrumental, clearing the ear before No Harm expands across the rest of side one. No Harm's major transition demonstrates Faust's new control: a seemingly loose vocal piece becomes a massive riff without requiring the debut's rapid montage.
The title track uses groove and instrumental exchange, but processing and asymmetric detail keep the ensemble from sounding like a conventional jam band. Mamie Is Blue slows the record into darker organ and guitar color, making timbre more important than event count. I've Got My Car and My TV turns consumer objects into a compact, skewed song, followed by three miniatures whose contrasts accelerate the ending. The production is clearer than the debut yet still treats distortion, repetition, sudden scale and incomplete duration as primary musical decisions.
Track guide
Nine pieces from Rainy Day to In the Spirit
It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl
A basic drum pattern, simple keyboard harmony and a repeated vocal line establish a groove that barely changes in conventional terms. That restraint magnifies texture: each entrance, accent and shift of vocal weight becomes significant. The contradictory weather phrase is affectionate and absurd at once. Faust turns material simple enough for a pop song into a long-duration study, neither parodying accessibility nor delivering its expected verse-chorus payoff.
On the Way to Abamäe
The short instrumental moves with a lighter, more provisional character. Rather than function as a fully expanded composition, it connects the opener's locked pulse to No Harm's larger drama. Melody and rhythm appear in sketch form, making travel more important than destination. Its brevity is structural: Faust can now use a track as a deliberate interval without embedding it invisibly inside a long collage.
No Harm
The longest piece begins with voice, space and loose instrumental response. Tension accumulates slowly until the band finds a brutal repeated figure, driven by drums and low-end weight. The transformation feels earned because the opening has withheld stable momentum for so long. Words remain fragmentary and theatrical rather than explanatory. By ending side one in collective insistence, No Harm shows how Faust can create shock through delayed commitment instead of abrupt tape splicing.
So Far
The title track opens side two with an elastic groove shared by drums, guitar, organ, reeds and electronic color. Instruments answer one another without settling into solo-and-accompaniment hierarchy. Processing roughens the edges of an arrangement that might otherwise seem comparatively approachable. The title suggests a provisional report: this is how far the band has moved toward song and groove, while every unstable timbre insists that the journey is incomplete.
Mamie Is Blue
A darker, slower field follows the title track's movement. Organ, guitar and vocal presence establish melancholy without polishing it into a ballad. Repetition allows distortion and sustain to carry emotional weight. The named Mamie remains elusive; the music offers condition rather than biography. Its six-minute scale gives the record a central area of shadow before the shorter and more comic pieces begin cutting side two into quick contrasts.
I've Got My Car and My TV
A compact vocal construction turns ownership and consumer comfort into a phrase too blunt to provide reassurance. Guitar, rhythm and studio detail keep the apparent song off balance. Unlike the debut's broad cultural collage, the track focuses on two ordinary objects and lets repetition expose their inadequacy. Its relative concision makes the satire sharper, though the music never pauses to issue a formal political explanation.
Picnic on a Frozen River
This miniature compresses a complete visual contradiction into less than a minute. Instrumental gestures appear, establish cold motion and disappear before development can stabilize them. The title is more expansive than the duration, forcing the listener to imagine space that the music only flashes into view. Its placement breaks the expectation that every LP track must justify itself through song-length completeness.
Me Lack Space...
A clipped voice-centered fragment makes grammatical shortage mirror physical shortage. The ellipsis is part of the design: the track does not close but hands its incompleteness directly to the finale. After several larger pieces, this compressed utterance makes lack audible through duration. It should remain separately indexed because the original programme presents the transition as a two-part exchange rather than one combined title.
...In the Spirit
The answer to Me Lack Space expands into a brief, unexpectedly buoyant closing gesture. Organ, ensemble color and a lighter communal tone replace restriction with motion. The paired ellipses connect the two titles while preserving their different musical functions. Faust ends not with the debut's long spoken dissolution but with a compact release whose optimism remains strange enough to avoid becoming a conventional finale.
Ordinary objects
Cars, television, weather and inadequate space
So Far has no single plot; its titles collect weather, travel, warning, emotional color, possessions, leisure, shortage and spirit. Ordinary language is repeatedly made inadequate by duration or arrangement. Rainy Day repeats one contradiction until it becomes environment rather than statement. No Harm attaches reassurance to music that grows increasingly threatening, exposing the distance between phrase and physical effect.
Car and TV reduce a promised modern life to two possessions whose recital sounds both proud and empty. Picnic on a Frozen River makes leisure physically impossible, while Me Lack Space turns limitation into broken syntax. The final In the Spirit answers lack with collective energy but does not resolve the album into a declared philosophy. Across the sequence, Faust uses simple words as surfaces beneath which rhythm, distortion and structure can produce contrary meanings.
Polydor 2310 196
Black sleeve, nine tracks and ten visual panels
So Far reverses the debut's transparency with a predominantly black outer package. The original edition included a set of square visual prints associated with the album's individual pieces and overall identity. Bright, simplified shapes and symbols appear against black, giving each track a separate emblem rather than illustrating a shared story. The package can be handled and rearranged, turning the listener into an editor of visual sequence.
Uwe Nettelbeck is credited with the album design and Edda Köchl with printing work. The contrast with Faust is deliberate in effect even without a written manifesto: exposed anatomy gives way to concealed surface and detachable images. Nine audio tracks and multiple visual panels create related but not mechanically identical structures. Reissues that reproduce only one front image lose some of the original edition's tactile multiplicity.
1972
Polydor asks for clarity and receives Faust
Polydor released So Far in 1972 as Faust's second album. The nine-track programme was more legible than the debut's three collages, but it still did not provide the straightforward commercial record the label might have wanted. Its steady rhythms and compact vocal pieces offered accessible entrances without removing noise, fragment, absurdity or long-form transformation. The original package remained expensive and unconventional, reinforcing Faust's identity as a total studio-and-object project.
Commercial results again disappointed Polydor, and the group's relationship with the company did not develop into mainstream success. British listeners soon encountered Faust through Virgin's aggressively low-priced Faust Tapes, compiled from Wümme recordings in 1973. That famous marketing story belongs to the later compilation, not to So Far itself. Critical reputation subsequently placed the second album beside the debut as a distinct demonstration of what the Wümme system could produce.
Experimental rock
Accessibility without normalization
So Far became especially influential for artists interested in repetition that is simultaneously primitive, emotional and conceptually sharp. It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl demonstrates how minimal rock materials can sustain attention without virtuoso display or electronic sequencing. No Harm provides a model for delayed structural violence: a piece can spend minutes withholding the riff that eventually redefines everything before it. The album's near-songs foreshadow later experimental rock that uses pop shape as camouflage for production and formal disruption.
Its short side-two pieces also anticipate fragment-based sequencing without repeating the debut's continuous collage method. Faust IV would refine the balance between concise songs, instrumental environments and abrasive interruption in a different studio context. The visual print portfolio remains an important example of packaging that grants tracks individual images without reducing them to illustration. So Far endures because it is approachable in units but resistant as a whole: every apparently friendly structure contains a decision that prevents normalization.
Original programme
Keep the nine original pieces separate
The canonical album contains nine tracks. Side one ends with the ten-minute No Harm. So Far and Mamie Is Blue are the two longest pieces on side two. Three short tracks accelerate the final sequence.
Me Lack Space and In the Spirit should remain separately indexed. The core album lineup is the five-person group without debut percussionist Arnulf Meifert. Vocals appear throughout, so an Instrumental classification is incorrect. Bonus tracks and The Faust Tapes material belong outside the original programme.
A listening path
Hear what changes beneath the groove
- Stay with Rainy Day's basic pulse and register every small change.
- Use Abamäe as a deliberate clearing before No Harm.
- Wait for No Harm's riff rather than treating its opening as delay.
- At the side turn, compare the title track's groove with the opener's stasis.
- Let Mamie Is Blue establish the album's darkest sustained color.
- Hear Car and TV as a skewed song before the three miniatures break scale.
- Preserve the pause and linkage between the final two tracks.
Research trail
Sources and further reading
- Faust band history and Wümme chronology — Faust
- So Far original nine-track release record — MusicBrainz
- So Far track programme and album record — AllMusic
- So Far authorized reissue and original side sequence — Bureau B / Tapete Records
- Faust 1971–1974 discography and archive context — Bureau B