AFFENSTUNDE

'Affenstunde' is Popol Vuh's first recording and was released in 1970. Now , forget for a second that 'Popol Vuh' recorded some great records later on and take a trip back in time. Florian Fricke a young music student (piano and composition), becomes friend with Eberhard Schoener, a German Orchestra leader, who teaches Fricke about the potentials of 'The Moog Synthesizer', a new musical device that creates electronic waveformes with an incredible potential of sounds, going from the imitation of acoustic instruments to random noise. Wendy Carlos had already showed the potential of this new muiscal device with her 'Moog' recordings of Bach (Switched on Bach).

In the spring of 1969 Fricke creates 'Popol Vuh after the proposition of 'Liberty Records' to record a 'experimental moog album' following the succes of 'the Switched on' series and hits like 'Popcorn'. You don't have to be a great musician (even if it helps) to use the moog, but you have to be a knobfiddler and know something about dynamics. Apparently Fricke missed both qualities and as his later records will show he was more interested in acoustic instruments, and more traditional melodies and harmonies, and didn't get the real potential of the 'Moog' as Klaus Schulze or Wendy Carlos in their respective fields.

This record is boring and uninteresting and contains nothing that would caracterize the great 'Popol Vuh' sound of the later records. On side one a long suite of uninspired athmospheres lacking any melodic or dynamic interest and on side two a long track, that is eqally boring with just a short passage at about 7:00, with an ulian-pipe-type-sound, that sounds like the pedal harmonium sounds that appear on later 'Popol Vuh' records, but gets completely boring after 2 minutes. The percussion work of Holger Trütsch is eqally uninspired and Fricke had still to wait for the arrival of Daniel Fichelscher to have a brillant percussionplayer.

If you want to get into Popol Vuh avoid this record and start with 'Hosianna Mantra.

Erreur de jeunesse!