Popol Vuh
Hosianna Mantra

"Hosianna Mantra" was a mystical hymn imbued with "cosmic" purity that marvelously united Christian and Eastern religiosity and resonated in the minds of all the "initiates" at the time of its release: Fricke had decided to renounce all electronic instruments and composed what remains indisputably his masterpiece. Fricke's religious influences and "spiritual" journey are probably the origin of this return to the uncontaminated "purity" of acoustic instruments such as piano, harpsichord, violin, and oboe, which offered the avant-garde of the time a mantric "gem," a timeless and innovative music that, from here on, would be a watershed in his musical conception.

The album is divided into two "suites": "Hosianna Mantra" and "Das V. Buch Mose". The contribution of Korean Djong Yun is invaluable: her mystical voice seems to come from otherworldly dimensions and plays a decisive role in the magic of the record, along with the intricate guitar work of Conny Veit, whose psychedelic adornments enrich the mystical aura emanating from the grooves. It's difficult to describe the healing sensations of the notes of this music: surely the absence of drums helps "expand" the "sound" and make the listening experience a cathartic one.

The album opens with the romantic and Central European notes of Fricke's piano with "Ah!"; the sound of the piano then repeats cyclically and minimally, accompanied by the therapeutic notes of Klaus Wiese's tamboura and Conny Veit's guitar. In "Kyrie", Djong Yun's celestial voice appears, reciting sacred texts accompanied as always by the omnipresent piano: it's a transcendent experience that is unparalleled in any music of that era. The title-track "Hosianna Mantra" is a long ride that starts quietly with the tamboura of K. Wiese and continues with Djong Yun's ecstatic voice and the electric guitar adding psychedelic spices to the mystical context created; the sound of the oboe and the chanting of sacred hymns bring the listener's mind to a state of concentration and prayer from which it is difficult to awake.

Side B opens with "Abschied", a track enriched by a luminous oboe and proceeds with "Segnung", in which Djong Yun's radiant voice recites texts taken from the Bible: this piece seems recorded in a remote monastery, only Popol Vuh knew under what visions of purity and innocence they had immersed themselves. Another of the gems of this epochal work is "Nicht Hoch im Himmel", this track still shows Fricke's genius in composition, the atmosphere proving to be among the most intense and dark of the entire album.

By the end of the listening, you are like dazed; it is impossible to remain indifferent if you manage to "enter" into the pan-cultural mysticism of this record: it is evident that Fricke's exquisite European musical culture managed to combine with oriental "mantric" structures in a perfect union that no one will be able to replicate at these levels in the future.