AFFENSTUNDE

Affenstunde is the ground-breaking debut of Florian Fricke's electronic/ethnic/meditative project Popl Vuh. As all pioneering electronic music, this isn't an easy listen. It is music with very abstract melodic development, meaning that it has no obvious repetitious melodies that we are used to in pop music.

From a historical perspective this album is simply essential. There had been similar electronic experiments in modern classical music, but no artist in pop music had dared to go where Florian Fricke takes us to here. I'm not really sure though where 'here' is exactly. It looks like a place with no soul, so alien from anything human that I find it very hard to connect to. Not only does it abstain from melody, it also doesn't have any rhythm or emotion. It is cold mathematical music that sounds as if it could be produced by machines using electronically processed noise.

Some tracks like the opener use heavily treated organ sounds that still resonate with a deep cosmic ambience, other pieces such as part 5 seem like randomly processed samples of sheep herds in a mountain pass being chased by a shepherd gone completely berserk.

Interesting? "Sure". Listenable? "Ehm". Essential? "Quite". Any good? "Are you done asking irrelevant questions?".