Die Nacht Der Seele - Tantric Songs cover

Die Nacht Der Seele - Tantric Songs

Released

In the late 1970s, Popol Vuh’s music really started to change. Their albums were less focused, more varied, with leader Florian Fricke embracing different tonalities. On Die Nacht Der Seele (Tantric Songs), this meant anything from clattering percussive miniatures (“Im Reich der Schatten”) to a number of pieces that invoked the chanting of Tibetan monks (“Mantram der Erdberunhrung”, the gloomy “Wanderer durch die Nacht”). When the usual, two-chord mantras for guitar and piano did appear, with Renate Knaup and Djong Yun back on vocals, they felt lighter, unmoored, spun from altogether more fragile matter. But the core of the thing — hypnotic repetition, to access the infinite — is still there. “Florian’s music makes you stoned when you sing it,” Knaup told artist and journalist Edwin Pouncey back in 1996, “the repetition makes you high.”

Jon Dale

Recommended by

Suggestions
_snd cover

_snd

Microstoria
Sea Glass cover

Sea Glass

Susan James
What?? cover

What??

Folke Rabe
Seal Pool Sounds cover

Seal Pool Sounds

Philip Sanderson
Instrument cover

Instrument

To Rococo Rot
Trips Und Träume cover

Trips Und Träume

Witthüser & Westrupp
Kamikaze cover

Kamikaze

Mainliner
♥ / lamb cover

♥ / lamb

Soccer Committee
Cold and the Crackle cover

Cold and the Crackle

not drowning, waving