HOSIANNA MANTRA

This soothing and borderline meditative release by krautrockers POPOL VUH back in 1972 harnessed widespread acclaim for its new-ageish approach to music. Featuring two short and two long songs and clocking around 37 minutes, HOSIANNA MANTRA is mostly ambient music with heavy influences of neoclassical compositions and style. The record's characteristic is the ethereal atmosphere created by gentle guitar sweeps accompanied by constant piano playing and occasional soprano female vocals (by occasional I mean half of the time).

Now, for all its innovativeness and creative approach to ambient music by using (progressive) rock instruments and even so making minimalistic compositions, it's rather troubling that HOSIANNA MANTRA feels like a 37-minute-long act rather than an album with four allegedly distinct tracks. The quartet sounds too similar, with very little to differ among themselves, and eventually the repetitiveness - a la drone, as aforementioned - gets dragging and dull. It doesn't go as far as becoming unbearable, it just stops feeling enjoyable to listen to after a while.

Still, POPOL VUH's masterpiece is digestible if correctly approached (and by that I mean digested in more than one listen) and is open to revisits that might be often even. What won't matter is which track to check, after all, they're the same.

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