Seligpreisungen

Performer: Popol Vuh
Engineer: Stommeln; Altenmarkt
Producer: Florian Fricke; Reinhardt Langowski
Distributor: MSI Music Distribution

Notes: Personnel: Florian Fricke (vocals, piano); Conny Veit (guitar, 12-string guitar); Danny Secundus Fichelscher (guitar, drums, congas); Daniel Fischelscher (guitar); Klaus Wiese (tamboura); Robert Eliscu (oboe). Photographers: Bettina; Kranz. Arranger: Florian Fricke. Released in 1973, Seligpreisung was, if anything, a complete shock after the gorgeous "religious" rock of Hosianna Mantra. Gone are the hypnotic Gregorian chants and overtone layers of drone. In their place is a kind of shimmering, spacy jazz-rock where, despite a few instances of Florian Fricke chant-singing, the effect is one where his piano becomes the steadiest backdrop, playing hypnotic, repetitive chords and phrases while Conny Veit improvises with David Gilmour-like blues guitar phrases over the gently swirling music. Elsewhere, the rest of the group (the same cats who played on Hosianna Mantra) is heard in classically tinged miniatures that float through the mix with a kind of meandering insistence on instantly recognizable Western thematics and standard conceptions of beauty rather than confrontations -- however subtle -- with the East/West space-time continuum. This is not to say that Seligpreisung is a disappointment; rather, it is only a shock for its giant step backward into the realm of the conventional. Perhaps Hosianna Mantra presented an abyss, and as Fricke looked over it musically, he realized that its beauty was unbearable. For whatever the reason, Seligpreisung is a meditative, generally quiet, and lovely album, but it doesn't go near the precipice. ~ Thom Jurek

With their early experiments in sky-touching electronic music, German group Popol Vuh are sometimes lumped in with the Krautrock bands of the 1970s, but they had been working their own territory from the beginning. Less interested in classical forms and intellectualism, keyboardist/composer Florian Fricke crafted mind-expanding ambient Moog pieces supported by tribal percussion that mimicked Indian ragas, African drum circles, and other ethnic influences. It was one of the first examples of "world fusion," uniting the best aspects of Western technology with second- and third-world sounds and forms. The band pursued this track into the '90s, and released 22 albums, including soundtracks to several Werner Herzog films.

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