Faust - Faust (1971)

The impact of Faust cannot be overstated; their debut album was truly a revolutionary step forward in the progress of "rock music". It was pressed on clear vinyl, packaged in a clear sleeve, with a clear plastic lyric insert. The black X-ray of a fist on the cover graphically illustrates the hard core music contained in the grooves, an amalgamation of electronics, rock, tape edits, acoustic guitars, musique concrete, and industrial angst. The level of imagination is staggering, the concept is totally unique and it's fun to listen to as well.

Faust - The Faust Tapes (1973)

This was the release that "broke" Faust to a British audience, mostly because of a marketing gimmick whereby the then-infant Virgin label sold it in shops for half a pound. Still, it's no mean feat to sell 50,000 copies of rock this avant-garde, no matter what the cost. A continuous 43-minute piece with about 26 discrete passages (which makes it hell to zero in on a specific bit on CD), it roams from crash'n'mash drums and fierce art rock jamming to rather pretty, if inscrutable, bits of folk-rock and spoken word, with odd shards of melody sticking out like glass in a tire. There are rough reference points to Zappa in the torrid editing and British Canterbury bands in the goofier, more rock-driven parts, but this is even less immediately accessible, taking a few plays to get a grip on, though most pop-oriented listeners won't get that far.

Faust - So Far (1972)

Faust's second album moves closer to actual song structure than their debut, but it still remains experimental. Songs progress and evolve instead of abruptly stopping or cutting into other tracks. The opening song "It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl" begins as a repetitive 4/4 beat played on toms and piano with the title sung over the top. But for seven minutes the song adds instruments, including a lush analog synth line, and ends in a memorable sax riff. Faust's lyrical side appears on the acoustic "Picnic on a Frozen River" and "On the Way to Adamäe," whereas its abrasive side pops up on "Me Lack Space." "So Far," a jam shared by guitar, horns, and tweedy keyboard, rolls along with a funky hypnotic beat and wailing processed synths. And on "No Harm," the crazed delivery of such lines as "Daddy, take the banana, tomorrow Sunday" makes one want to believe something profound is going down. In terms of scope and the wealth of ideas, this is probably the most balanced of their first four albums.

Faust - 71 Minutes of Faust (1998)

Basically an expanded version of Munich and Elsewhere (which was itself a compilation of unreleased material), with the addition of the unreleased LP Faust Party Three (parts of which had previously appeared only as limited-edition EPs and singles), as well as two previously unreleased tracks. Parts wed brutal drum patterns to insistently repetitive guitar riffing; there are prog rock keyboard passages that slightly recall Soft Machine; and "Don't Take Roots" sounds like an unintentional satire of the cheap California psychedelia that you might hear on a late-'60s youth culture exploitation flick. Sometimes it even sounds like a parody of early King Crimson-type pomp rock. It would be nice to have some liner notes explaining exactly what comes from where, but basically what you need to know is that it was all recorded in Germany from 1971 to 1975 and is on par with the quality of the albums they actually released during that time.

Smog - Forgotten Foundation (1992)

Lots of lo-fi experimentalism are thrown around here, from some ultradistorted vocals to unexpected blurts of cheesy-sounding instruments, but there's far more unrealized potential than properly realized artistic goals. Sometimes there's an eerie psychedelic vibe that resembles Pink Floyd (in their just post-Syd Barrett days) as in the very beginning of the opening track, "Burning Kingdom." At other times it sounds no more clever, and equally as annoying, as Daniel Johnston in its auteurish immaturity. Sometimes the genuine sorrow and hurt that would color the best of Smog's later work surfaces in close-to-formulated songs, like "Bad Investment." More often, however, the melodic and lyrical ideas are buried under gratuitous fuzziness, or are too fragmentary and undeveloped to hold interest.

Cul De Sac - I Don't Want To Go To Bed (1994)

After Cul de Sac's 1992 debut, Ecim, was met with a warm critical response, there were some complications that put off the group's next studio recording until 1996. In the interim, this lo-fi compilation of mostly improvised experimental rock was issued to an equally awestruck music underground. I Don't Want to Go to Bed is a collage of weighty Cul de Sac rehearsal tape highlights compiled by drummer Chris Guttmacher between 1990 and 1993. While the 11 tracks might strike the uninitiated as more than a little aimless, Krautrock and deconstructionist fans (post-rock and otherwise) will marvel at this unorthodox craftwork. While the subtle surf and experimental jazz-rock textures that help propel records like China Gate are nowhere to be found on I Don't Want to Go to Bed, the herky-jerky currents ("Lower Hate, Massachusetts"), Middle Eastern melodies ("This Is the Metal That Do Not Burn"), and spacious meditations ("Doldrums") make a textural mark all their own. It might lack sonic detail, but this sophomore release makes up for it with spontaneity and vision.

Guided By Voices - Live At The Wheelchair Races (2003)

Live at the Wheelchair Races' is a CD of unreleased live material from throughout the GBV career, selected by Rich Turiel and Robert Pollard from hundreds of tapes of unreleased live material. From live staples to rarities, this 32 song compilation covers it all.

Bruce Russell - 21st Century Field Hollers & Prison Songs (2005)

In an intriguing act of self-exhumation, Bruce Russell has plundered the carcass of his own (with Ralf Wehowsky) earlier release on a bruit secret, ‘Midnight Crossroads Tape Recorder Blues’ (a recording with which I’m not familiar), extracting elements that held for him a particularly bluesy resonance, re-recording them at odd speeds and then constructing loops to create (almost) entirely new works. That blues (and dub) feeling really does permeate the tracks, sometimes overtly, other times requiring a certain amount of aural perseverance.

But the fact that Russell does generally utilize loops makes for a certain ease of entry as even the harshest or most abstract nodules attain some familiarity with each repetition. The opening “Black Car Blues” creates a murky, gelid atmosphere with shards that may have been lifted from “Concret ph” knifing through the gloom. You could likely derive a good deal of amusement attempting to ID sources throughout the disc. I swear the second track, “Kate’s Blues #3”, contains a segment from Frith’s “No Birds”…but I could be wrong. On the other hand, if that’s not the loopy synth from “Space Is the Place” popping up on “Dirty Water Dub” (great title) I’ll eat my pixels. Many of the nine, shortish tracks (the disc as a whole is barely over a half-hour) are guitar-driven, allowing Russell to at least hint at blues wails and often more than that, though lines of any clarity are swiftly chopped into stew-meat. By doing so, Russell achieves a chewy, rough medium between song and tape collage where the loops provide the form but the elements from which they’re created simultaneously subvert any such suggestion. My personal favorite is the final cut, relatively lengthy at five minutes where the music seems to branch out into wider territory, abandoning any specific genre--fittingly, it’s dedicated to Philip Samartzis. There’s a sense of stepping outside an area whose hermeticism wasn’t earlier perceptible; a very strong piece.

The Residents - Duck Stab / Buster & Glen (1978)

Sandwiched in between Third Reich and Roll, Eskimo, and The Commercial Album, Duck Stab/Buster & Glen hasn't always received the fanfare of other late-'70s Residents material. It's one of the few that isn't a concept album and probably the least experimental of the bunch. Still, it's quintessential Residents' rock -- which is to say, it's like nothing else on the planet. Few of the songs last longer than a couple of minutes, and only a few instruments can be heard at any given time. Rather than relying on guitars, the Residents stick to the relatively primitive synthesizers and electronic gadgets of their time. Chorus chants on "Bach Is Dead" meet with a melody that sounds like a cross between a sixth grader playing recorder and someone scratching on a balloon. Snakefinger's nasally vocals fit in all too well with their high-pitched electronica, which then somehow merges with funereal marching percussion. It seems annoying and stupid at first, but over time you feel compelled to listen again and again. Such is the glory of the Residents!

The Residents - Meet The Residents (1974)

The Residents are true avant-garde crazies. Their earliest albums (of which this is the first) have precedents in Captain Beefheart's experimental albums, Frank Zappa's conceptual numbers from Freak Out!, the work of Steve Reich, and the compositions of chance music tonemeister John Cage -- yet the Residents' work of this time really sounds like nothing else that exists. All of the music on this release consists of deconstructions of countless rock and non-rock styles, which are then grafted together to create chaotic, formless, seemingly haphazard numbers; the first six "songs" (including a fragment from the Nancy Sinatra hit "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'") are strung together to form a larger entity similar in concept to the following lengthier selections. The result is a series of unique, odd, challenging numbers that are nevertheless not entirely successful. The album cover is a fierce burlesque of the Beatles' first U.S. Capitol label release, sporting puerilely doctored photographs of the Fab Four on the front and pictures of collarless-suited sea denizens on the back (identified as Paul McCrawfish, Ringo Starfish, and the like). This is an utterly bizarre platter that may appeal to very adventurous listeners.