Revisited & Remixed 1970-99

The idea that you have to "Remix" and"Revisit" old music in order for the "younger generation" to appreciate it seems woefully out of date nowadays. Our ability to find and value unusual music is so much more attuned in an age of youtube videos and digital downloads, that one wonders if projects like this, a double CD celebrating Popol Vuh with some reinterpretations, really have any value anymore.

On the other hand though, for Popol Vuh to be recognised at all must have some worth. They remain the most enigmatic of all the German bands, having been one of the first to use proper electronic equipment only to reject it when all the others started to embrace it. This release is timed to celebrate the 10th anniversary of founder Florian Fricke's death and was commissioned by his son Johannes alongside original band member Frank Fiedler.

I've become a huge fan of Popol Vuh in the last five years. Their music has a timeless sense of displacement about it, untouched by the hand of modernity even though Fricke was one of the first to own the original Moog synthesizers. He went backwards in time with the machine, using the acoustics of a church for the sepulchral "Affenstunde" or applying phantom voices for the soundtrack to Herzog's "Aguirre". Germany at that time was a cauldron of ideas, political foment and the sound of generations crashing against each other. Fricke's music seems both intensely allied to it and yet at the same time light years away from it. And then, of course he rejected it and went back to a simple interplay of guitar, piano, voices and eastern instrumentation.

Having been extremely disappointed by the Can remix project back in 1997, it was with trepidation that I heard about this. This idea was, according to SPV, helped by Richard D James asking to reissue Affenstunde. No remix from him sadly(which I must admit I would be very excited to hear), but the likes of Stereolab, Moritz Von Oswald, Dixon & Ame, Peter Kruder and The Orb w/ Thomas Fehlmann appear, alongside the two contributions from Mika Vainio and Haswell/Hecker that was released as a single by Editions Mego in 2008. All in all, a slightly predictable cast, but understandable.

The results are, well, mixed. Adding drum machine beats to great ambient music most of the time is like Klaus Schulze reinterpreting Mozart, i.e a horror story that you can never forget. To his credit, Peter Kruder's reinterpretation of Aguirre is one of the best, applying a feather-lite rhythm and letting the original synths coalesce into a house tempo without letting it slide into mundanity. The Schwarz/Dixon/Ame remix of "Heart of Glass" also keeps the fractured beauty, but adds some subtlety and doesn't attempt to yank the song into the 21st century. Alex Barck (of Jazzanova) treats "Haram Dei Haram Dei" lightly, adding some electronic trills early on before building it to a dancefloor climax - the fact that he doesn't throw in a 4/4 beat immediately gives it a structure closer to the original.

This can't be said of Roland Appel's treatment of "Kyrie", which is pretty disastrous. One of Fricke's finest creations being turned into something you'd hear at DC10 or some other Balearic hellhole. Whilst Fricke's son curated this project, I do think his father would turn in his grave on hearing that. Moritz Von Oswald's version of "Garten Pharaos" doesn't reach the same level of horror, but it's quite dull, a dubby M5 style beat that really doesn't go anywhere. Similarly, The Orb's re-edit of "Nachts Schnee" just doesn't have the same sense of range and tension that the Vainio version does.

Thankfully Mouse on Mars go the other way, turning "Through Pain through Heaven" into something completely different after 2 minutes, processing the melody cleverly into a quite psychotic-sounding freeform piece. In terms of invention, it's certainly one of the better versions. Haswell and Hecker's digital reworking of "Aguirre" from 2008 fizzes and sparks with some predictability, but it's still wonderful.

This was always going to be a bold attempt and elements of it hit the spot whilst others miss completely. It's not particularly satisfying for a fan like myself, but the objective is make people aware of a group of musicians who did something magical back then and perhaps more importantly, had an aesthetic and approach to making music that seems unimaginable in the electronic realm nowadays - i.e made in the image of religion.

Popol Vuh is a corpus of mytho-historical narratives of the post classic Quické kingdom in Guatemala's western highlands. The title translates as "Book of the People" (what would we do without Wikipedia). More importantly Popol Vuh were also a pioneering German kraut rock band who split up after the death of the band's founder, Florian Fricke, 10 years ago.

The band were way ahead of their time and their first album Affenstunde, released in 1970 and using the, then new, sounds of the Moog synthesizer coupled with ethnic percussion, was one of the earliest ambient albums and also an early example of global fusion. Later piano led musical explorations of religious themes are also deemed pioneering recordings in the 'New Age' genre, but please don't hold that against them. Werner Herzog employed the band to soundtrack several of his films including Nosferatu, Aguirre and Cobra Verde with Fricke even making a screen appearance in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser.

To mark the 10th anniversary of Florian Fricke's passing SPV are releasing a 2CD compilation featuring one disc highlighting their ambient and electronica side plus selected soundtrack work from some of Werner Herzog's classic films and a second CD of remixes by a really well selected bunch of contemporary bands and producers including Stereolab, Moritz von Oswald, Peter Kruder and Mike Vainio amongst others.

Now there is no getting away from the fact that a lot of the original cuts sound a bit dated but it must never be forgotten how mind blowing and inspirational to a generation of musicians those tracks actually were. Apart from ambient trainspotters most people are going to cite Brian Eno as ambient's main pioneer but he didn't start going all musically horizontal until five years after these boys.

So CD1 is an interesting historical musical document but the remixes drag these seminal tracks into the new millenium and are destined to inform a new generation about Popol Vuh. Look out for emotive building deep house from Peter Kruder, bass heavy hypnotic grooves from the Orb's Thomas Fellmann, our personal favourite an epic sprawling prog rock inspired mix from Alex Barck, a deep house dubscape from Mortiz von Oswald, an eight bit beat adventure from Mouse On Mars and a lighter more playful rework from Stereolab amongst other worthy reworkings from the likes of Mike Vainio, Haswell & Hecker and A Critical Mass amongst others.

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