Now that I come to this record, I'm not sure whether the Kate Bush story I told about Einsjäger und Siebenjäger actually applies to this one instead, or to both of them.
It's the earliest of the four Popol Vuh albums I have, when they were still using a synthesiser (alongside percussion and traditional organ), and it sounds a bit like the 'floating music' that Klaus Schulze was making around that time (the early '70s) or soon after — albums like Irrlicht and Blackdance — as well as early Tangerine Dream for that matter.
It would be easy to pass it off as just a product of its time and its milieu, but — maybe it's just my mood at the moment; waiting, waiting for the Boy — I've had this on the turntable for three or four days now, and keep wanting to give it another spin (the record has probably seen more plays in those days than in its entire life to this point). Some mystic improvisations just work and some flatter to deceive — that's the nature of the game. I'm still not entirely sure about this one, but maybe, just maybe…
Again one of the things that helped was being able to listen to Popol Vuh's other music on Last.fm, particularly the albums I've never heard before, which show further unanticipated variety: Tantric Songs, for example, reminds me of Moondog.
For some reason I'd never been curious enough to find out where Popol Vuh got their name, so I had a little Aha! when watching Fata Morgana on DVD while on holiday in June. The first part of Werner Herzog's film uses as part of its 'narrative' some of the creation myth from the original Popol Vuh, which is (I might have guessed!) an ancient book of scripture from Central America. Since the film was made in the late '60s, and Herzog was a friend of Popol Vuh's Florian Fricke, could it have been that Fricke got the idea for the band's name from Herzog — or was it the other way round?
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