Popol Vuh: Affenstunde [ESOTERIC]

Why you'll love it

This Esoteric reissue comes in a gatefold jacket with a poster. Affenstunde is one of the first albums to use the Moog synthesizer to compose original music, a forerunner of kosmische, ambient and minimalist electronic music.

This edition

• Gatefold jacket
• Poster included

About the album

Affenstunde means the hour of the monkey, and in 1970 it must have sounded like news from another planet. Florian Fricke had got his hands on a Moog III synthesizer, and instead of using it for novelty bleeps he used it to compose.

Recorded at Bavaria Music Studio in Munich with percussionist Holger Trülzsch, engineer Frank Fiedler at the synth mixing desk and Bettina Fricke producing and adding uncredited tablas, the album is two long journeys. Side one is the three-part suite Ich mache einen Spiegel, "Dream Part 4," "Dream Part 5" and "Dream Part 49," slow synthesized tones drifting over tabla and congas. Side two is the eighteen-minute title piece, washes of Moog over hand percussion that seem to hang in the air.

AllMusic called it an auspicious debut that holds up wonderfully, and Julian Cope heard sounds unlike anything before it. Fricke would go on to soundtrack Werner Herzog's films, and Herzog himself contributes to the liner notes here alongside Klaus Schulze. Fifty-odd years on, it remains the most relaxing thing anyone has ever done with a monkey in the title.

Also at Kops: more Popol Vuh on vinyl · browse Electronic

Tracklist

Listen

On Liberty / Esoteric Recordings (cat# ECLECLP2946), a reissue of the 1970 album.