Music ReviewsRock

CD Review: Hosianna Mantra by Popol Vuh

[review]

The Orient and the West making love. That’s the most powerful image emerging from HOSIANNA MANTRA, the masterpiece by German band Popol Vuh, led by musician Florian Fricke. After his trip to Orient, Fricke decided to merge all those lands’ spirituality with Western classical and rock music through his emotional and “visual” expertise (Werner Herzog was one of his best friends, and Fricke himself made soundtracks for the German movie director). The album’s music relates not only to Eastern spirituality, but to the Western one and Paganism too: different cultures, past and future, the sacred and the profane, blend themselves into each other, marking a path full of hope for all world’s people. The title itself is a tribute to all cultures, even those who can appear opposite. Far away from being overwhelmed by the musical experimentation of those years (above all, the almost continual use of Moog synthesizer), HOSIANNA MANTRA achieves a unique balance in Twentieth Century Music, using with skill and erudition several instruments like oboe, piano, tamboura, guitars and so on. Kyrie, Segnung, and the title-track itself, are laical liturgies, celebrations of the Earth and its strange inhabitants. Differently from the other Kosmische Musik works (above all the magniloquent Klaus Schulze’s IRRLICHT), the human being emerging from HOSIANNA MANTRA seems to abandon his Teutonic fight against the Universe and to achieve a communion with it. That’s why, when soprano Djon Yun repeats the word “hosianna”, the sky of Music seems to clear up in the touching embrace of all musical instruments.

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Alessandro Capuano
My name is Alessandro Capuano and I live in London. My education includes a Master of Arts in Cultures and Literatures in English and Postcolonial Studies and a qualification in Film Directing, with the production of screenplays and short-films. I also love writing. In 1999 I published a horror novel, “De Profundis”, and since 2004 I have my own website, “alexvertigoworld.tripod.com”, wich includes my music and film reviews. My passion number one is Music, especially ‘70s Rock. My favourite groups are The Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Can, and Neu!, and my favourite pop-rock icon is David Bowie. In 2005 American and English Postpunk became my major area of interest, so I love Public Image Ltd, Pere Ubu, The Residents and many others.
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