s/d popol vuh

i read that a while ago, it was a really great essay!!

pv must be the most powerful band in the world to inspire hyperbole of this magnitude, but i cannot argue with his last sentence at all.

Throughout this juxtaposition, Eternity sits above on her fat and absorptive throne of royal jelly not watching but anticipating all manifold, inevitable outcomes without a care and still it continues in its sad and joyful caresses. It’s beyond words. It’s beyond worlds. Play it at my funeral and I will be released.

this one is good too
http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/thebookofseth/popol-vuh-affenstunde

http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/66609_448065677609_2509972_n.jpg

Will never get tired of seeing that photo, nor of listening to Popol Vuh of all eras save City Raga.

I actually kinda like City Raga. Realize it's only tangentially related to the classic-era stuff (about as much Deep Forest as Popol Vuh) but I kept it in my car for a long time, and it makes great roadtrip music.

heywaitasecond

i can post a list here later after i go by and if anyone wants anything i will buy & ship.

― one dis leads to another (ian), Thursday, June 28, 2012 9:37 AM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark

my birthday is coming up...

(translation: i am feeling compelled to buy myself a present)

i still think about these records that i didn't buy and wonder what they were.

recently i watched the demme/herzog interview thingie from the bonus disc of encounters at the end of the world and herzog goes on about how much he loves music and blablabla. then demme's like "so popol vuh...what is that?" and oh did i scoff! do some homework, demme! geez.

anyway, i was thinking about popol vuh so i thought i would bump this thread for old time's sake.

Play it at my funeral and I will be released. <--- still hits home

speaking of Herzog, i recently read Every Night the Trees Disappear from cover to cover and there was NO MENTION of Popol Vuh whatsoever, which is fine -- I get the scope of the book. but still, i'd have liked one sentence? two sentences? an offhand mention?
nothing.

lots of good moments though -- i recommend the book if you're into that sort of thing. here's a sample i posted to another thread for an altogether different (worse) reason

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8492/8330412332_037b642f3d_b.jpg

this ever get posted here?

http://thequietus.com/articles/03775-the-great-ecstasy-of-the-sculptor-popol-vuh

good article

Yeah I missed that before. Especially great paragraph starting with 'Having been taught composition...'

i c/ped like three different paragraphs before i decided to go with a simple "good article" because i was getting too excited

cult-like devotion: activated

Popol Vuh, then, is uneasy listening, but like all the best mood music it envelops you in its own sound world, cocooning the listener in waves of sound. Fricke rarely played live and submitted to few interviews but inspired a kind of cult-like devotions amongst his fans. One of his very last projects was an audio-visual installation based around the myth of Orpheus - perhaps the 'cult' musician par excellence, of whom it was claimed his music could coax the trees and rocks into dance. He referred to the acoustically designed chambers of the installation as "good rooms", explaining in a contemporary interview, "We hear so much that we don't hear anything." Now, as music becomes increasingly the atomised personal soundtrack to every mundane activity, the music and ideas of a soundtrack composer for whom music was never background music, and always inseparable from a community of the faithful, from site and from ritual, may prove to be a much needed corrective, or cleansing purgative.

We hear so much that we don't hear anything

This strikes so painfully close to home for me right now. I am actually aiming to change this in my life starting today.

it's definitely hibernation time
also i think i read that article before when i was trying to find info about those PV listening parties in the church

I only really discovered PV last year, while watching Nosferatu. I was struck by the music and promptly bought the Herzog soundtrack box counting on all of it being as good. At the same time I made a resolution to watch more Herzog movies. The box is awesome and gets played regularly - everything except Fitzcarraldo (although I love the movie the opera stuff on the soundtrack annoys me).

More recently, I bought Affenstunde. I like that one too. Great, moody stuff, all of it. Equally well-suited to deep listening or as background while reading.

Florian Fricke in fact shares with the purveyors of mood music a great many concerns: the exotic fascination with faraway lands of Martin Denny, Les Baxter and the 101 Strings; the massed voices and Gregorian influence of Ray Conniff and the Swingle Singers; the use of found sounds and field recordings of Frank Clacksfield; the space-age sounds of Gershon Kingsley; the mysticism and promised healing properties of Andreas Wollenscheider's New Age music.

ok but why do i find popol vuh endlessly absorbing and yet am bored senseless by everyone else mentioned above

Because no sane person would choose to eat a bowl full of flour or a handful of butter when there's a fresh flaky delicious croissant right there on the table?

ok but why do i find popol vuh endlessly absorbing and yet am bored senseless by everyone else mentioned above

― (REAL NAME) (m coleman), Thursday, January 3, 2013 5:58 AM

theres a kitsch element to a lot of those thats more upfront so u have to be willing to put up with that (i happen to like martin denny, les baxter, ray conniff) whereas popol vuh doesn't wear the exotica/new ageness on their sleeve as much

I thought they were weird comparisons too, but i guess it's because people think of PV as "mood music" -- I'm not sure I do, really, nor could I use any of their albums as background music while reading. I'd be too distracted.

I do recommend (as I have said what seems like 1000x) listening to PV while walking through a plant conservatory or museum (esp if it has a lot of dioramas) or aquarium or other indoors/outdoors sort of place.

now i want a croissant

Are Popol Vuh really the croissant of music?

in den garten croissant.
but yeah as LL sez, being out and about with the vuh really does work -- the first time i "fell" for popol vuh outside of herzog's films was walking around government center in boston (with a walkman!) listening to a PV comp a friend had made for me. i think i was christmas shopping.

It's the kitsch factor that puts me off that stuff. I have listened to a couple Vangelis albums lately so I'm not totally immune. Croissants are too buttery for my tender tummy :(

You were rocking non stop at a government center? In Boston?xpost

had to make those secretaries feel better

I've never used that comparison before (was just thinking about flour and butter mostly), but croissants are pretty transcendent so I guess I'll stick with it. For me, a delicious flaky croissant is a truly sublime baked good.

I like the comparison the more I think about it--croissants truly are transcendent--but the problem is now my brain wants to compare other bands to baked goods (specifically wondering who would be the cheese danish) and that's just a terrible idea.

listening to Letzte Tage-Letzte Nachte this morning btw. not one i reach for often because of its more rock nature, but it is sounding croissantastic right now. is that Gila album good? i've never heard it.

Yes, it is. I do prefer the "rock" PV albums to the soundtracks and synth epics, though.

yeah, i think i'm coming around on the more rock stuff more and more.

the end of Letzte Tage-Letzte Nachte's title track kinda sounds like the Dead.

Letzte Tage-Letzte Nachte is my favorite Popol Vuh. LOVE that album!

And I hope it never gets remastered because I love that muddy sound, whether intentional or not. :)

deplorable lack of PV on Spotify, but at least they have Tantric Songs, which I haven't heard elsewhere

xp - oh god me too
and the cover is one of my favorite album covers of all time

it is funny, whenever i start playing popol vuh record, i think, "man, they should have recorded this better," but by the end of it, i do not think that at all. <3 the mud!

damn it, the only Gila album I can find on mog

https://search.mog.com/v2/albums/38135579/image.jpeg?size=800

it's probably pretty good tho, right?

LT-LN is not as muddy on the Spalax CD as it is on the SPV CD.

I like Herz aus Glas a wee bit more than LT-LN if truth be told. It's kind of perfect. LT-LN doesn't quite live up to 'Grosse Krieger' IMO.

The Gila album (Wounded Knee, not the one above) is definitely worth owning. It's not going to overhaul your world but it's good.

still don't have this oop pv album but someone put the whole thing on yootoob

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3KFc1Uon-w

I like Herz aus Glas a wee bit more than LT-LN if truth be told. It's kind of perfect. LT-LN doesn't quite live up to 'Grosse Krieger' IMO.

I've never been able to decide which one I like better. Every time I think it's one, the other one comes along and ~whoa~

I think I consider my 2nd fave PV album to be Bruder des Schattens aka the alternate version of Nosferatu. When I want innigkeit piano chamber Vuh. LT-LN coming in a close 3rd.

still think this is the high point of their rock side

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wQTOX8iokM

See what I want is a whole album of track 1 of Einsjager... that's pure guitar bliss right there

^^^^^

All my student neighbors are still gone for the break, so the other night I was playing Bruder des Schattens, Aguirre, and Das Hohelied Salomons really loud.

You know how to live!

I really like their rockin' stuff; it has this regal majestic flavor to it that is irresistible.

I think right now Hosianna Mantra and Seligpreisung are my favorite Popol Vuh records. I've been listening to them on the 45 minute drive to work as the sun is coming up and Oklahoma is frozen, it's nice.

^^ that sounds wonderful

two things:

* i have some croissants in the oven (just the rise-overnight kind, nothing fancy) and they smell divine.
* there's a goofy women's dance party thing that i dj'ed yesterday, and we have to do a warm-up and cool-down song and i chose "sing, for song drives away the wolves" as my cool down song -- i looked around the hot hot hot dance studio and there was stretching, meditating, yoga, eyes closed, eyes open. perfect and totally heavenly.