Popul Vuh need the barest of introductions on these pages that have held so many electronic love letters to a certain period of Germanic Rock.  Their euphoric, transcendent soundtracks for the incomparable Werner Herzog have in many ways overshadowed their own independent musical output.  The melding of Herzogs desperate, often primal imagery to Popol Vuh’s grand, synthesis of primal forces – forces for which their music often served as tributes – has wedded them to a cultural subconscious as Herzog’s movies have been repackaged, disseminated and eventually ascended to the background radiation of counter-cultural cinema.

Blätter aus dem Buch der Kühnheit was written (but not used) for Herzog’s 1976 film Heart of Glass, set in 18th Century Bavaria.  While the film remains notable for having most of the cast perform hypnotised this composition from Popol Vuh surges in with a’most ecstatic force.  A caffeinated attention grabbing celebration of light, competing sounds and melodies rushing in every direction at once, a melodic nod to it’s historical setting before an electric guitar wails into view upsetting the almost baroque mood.  Surging, assured, a crypto-religious exercise in historical evocation.

Popol Vuh – Blätter aus dem Buch der Kühnheit

Stephen Eicher recorded the tapes that would go on to be released on 7″ as Speilt Noise Boys around the same time he was playing with seminal Swiss synth-wave band Grauzone.  French label Born Bad have collected that single and two other tracks and recently reissued it on vinyl and CD.  Beginning with the hum of early electronics Miniminiminiminijupe’s simple drum machine builds into view before switching up with the vocal and becoming the driving synth-punk rush it seems destined to be.

Stephen Eicher – Miniminiminiminijupe

Thanks to James Hines for leading me to the door of Eyeless in Gaza.  Taking their name from an Aldous Huxley novel which in turn referenced Milton’s Samson Agonistes – so not a Muslimgauze style bit of agit-prop then – the band had a great run of synth-wave records on Cherry Red in the 80′s before reforming in the 90s.

Invisibility is from the 1981 album Photographs As Memories.  Channelling the conspicuously working class growl of a post-punk vocal over a incongruously ethereal guitar line and Eno-aping synth wash, we’re sucked into something that becomes increasingly beautiful as the angst gets drawn beneath layers of optimistic electronics.

Eyeless in Gaza – Invisibility

////////////////////////////////////////////////

Strange to think it was over two years ago that U.S. Girls first graced the pages of this webzine.  Here’s some 20JFG.tv of what I’m led to believe was her first visit to Brighton on Monday.

Ah, Vangelis, where would we be without you? Surely we wouldn’t have danced with gods and demons over portentous clouds of a blinding blue, or roamed the streets of hallucinated eastern bazaars where weasely merchants display their strange wares in a most ramshackle manner, baroque pieces of analogical technology blessed with spells of a sublime glamour, we have waxed lyrical about the organic psychedelia and mystery of Earth, and ‘See you Later’s’ synthetic mesmerism, we have fallen in love with Sean Young under a technological rainbow and beheld, from the great wall of China slender ghosts and spirits flying as the sun sets, you have taken us to so many fantastic places, without you we wouldn’t be what we are, and thus we can forget with a smile of understanding the New Age excesses down which your glorious path eventually led.

Let us tread today the vast grounds of that glorious sonic cathedral which ‘Heaven and Hell’ is, and more specifically the first part of its first movement, ‘Bacchanalle’, mere mortals scurrying around the colossal feet of Gods and Demons as they rendezvous responding to the call of a horn blown by Heimdall, artifice of hands manipulating a synthesiser which strikes like a lightning bolt hurled by Zeus, or the riff with which Mahavishnu Orchestra shake our soul at the beginning of Birds of Fire, this is Vangelis at his most bombastic, the exhilaration of his movements bringing to mind images of abstract and blinding power that parallel the apocalyptic vistas of Magma’s mastodontic opus, no mean feat.

This is music larger than life the likes of which are few and far between these pedestrian days, this is music that flies past the mundane, oblivious to the sneers of those who dare not, aiming for the impossible and, for a second, attaining it. It is commendable to try this way, and we will love you for it, but when you have actually reached these peaks so often, illuminating our lives with music this propulsive and ecstatic, like a condensed ray of divine light breaking through black storm clouds, then we shall worship you.

There.

Vangelis- Heaven and Hell first Movement: Bacchanale

Most of which things would of course also apply to Werner Herzog and his grandiose comrade in arms Klaus Kinski, as well as many of those fiery german progressive bands of the 1970s which paraphrasing our brother Lord Nuneaton (happy birthday, see below!), got close, oh so close to the flame. I hadn’t listened to Popol Vuh until quite recently, and I have been rather blown away by the way in which their epic ruminations have influenced Earth’s slow motion codeine doom, and the spellbinding incantation of so many folk bands of these days, Six Organs of Admittance and Espers do come to mind most particularly.

In the beautifully contemplative ‘Wo bist du, der du uberwunden’ we find ourselves slowly enveloped by intertwining patterns of sound, stand in front of the luxuriant jungle clad in your shiny silver breastplate, modern music conquistador, and watch the jungle slowly grow around you, roots and creepers stretching and climbing like these intricate guitar melodies, life spreading gentle and strong until you find yourself surrounded by a canopy of green and the smell of things growing and dying and rotting, hearing ghostly voices from beyond, perhaps the spirits of Mayan swimmers at the bottom of a lake full of gold, more likely the echo of a dream.

Popol Vuh- Wo bist du, der du uberwunden

And let us bring today’s post to a close with a reference to kids whose music also smells of things green, fresh and lovely, this is High Places, who have kept going from strength to strength since they came to our attention a year or so ago.

In their new S/T album out on Thrill Jockey (or beloved Upset The Rhythm in the UK), they continue on a transit down quiet roads under the light of the moon and the attentive gaze of barn owls, to the rhythm of a music constructed organically, maybe with drum machines grown in corn fields, or sampling the precisely improvised movements of wood creatures burrowing food during for the autumn. In this sense there is a resemblance to the Animal Collective, but more serene, mellower, these are lullabies and spells to vanquish the nightmares and horrors in the darkness at the edge of your campsite, in the case of ‘The Tree with the lights in it’ a calypso made of dead leaves which comes across like Glass Candy’s Iko Iko tender and shy sister, very very lovely stuff.

High Places- The Tree with the Lights in it

- – - – - – -

NICE CLOTHES

Finest purveyors of modern apparel Art in the Age of the Mechanical Reproduction have just put up for sale the oh so very nice Spring Break 08 tees that No Age have made specially for them. They are limited, and quite special so we advise you to run to their online store and grab one. Or perhaps try your luck with the contest they are organising, if the Gods smile upon you you might well end up with not only the t-shirt, but also Nouns on vinyl and Eraser on 7”. Of course you should already have those, but hey!

- – - – - -

GOOD SHOWS

We’ll be there on ecstatic celebration of the amaze of chaos and wonder that Medicine and Duty are (check out the new tunes in their myspace player, Jury Rigged is absolute killer) as well as Lord Nuneaton Savage’s birthday, don’t miss out!

Dread at the Controls:

In which our hero reveals that we’re fucked and we’re all going to die.

Here’s the good news: The Beast isn’t coming. Here’s the bad news: He isn’t coming ‘cos we scare him too much.

Blind Willie Johnson: Dark was the Night (Cold was the Ground)

Yeah, it seems that despite some of our more fervent wishes, the earth isn’t going to end in a hail of scalding ice, to a soundtrack of inhuman piping played in blasphemous paws. No. It’s going to go by accident, alone and unloved, sniveling in the corner of an empty universe: unwatched, unguarded, desolate.

It’s a monster bummer, to be sure. But, search down deep inside your cavernous maw of despond, and you’ll find something cold and hard and imperious. Something that cannot be destroyed by fear because it is chisseled from fear itself. The rastafarians have known about it for years, but it remains useful to those of us not connected with any particular faith. The dark matter of which I speak is Dread.

Dread: the spirit loa of inevitable destruction. The cavern at the bottom of a deep sea, encrusted with black crystals and guarded by shining eyes. It’s in the chanting of monks and the throb of dub. The knife on bone scraping of metal over a steel stringed guitar. It’s a howl so silent it shows in the reflections of skrying mirrors. Wolves use it to hunt, priests to pray. It’ll keep you sane and drive you backwards. A symbiote: it feeds off you even as you feed of it. It’s nourishment, kidda. Reeeal tasty like.

It sounds like this:

Popol Vuh: Vuh

This is something you’ll have felt before: You’re in the supermarket and you’ve reached the till. Just as you’re about to go for a plastic bag in which to wrap your lovingly picked organic produce you stop.

Voiceover: Now, that produce would fit perfectly well into the bag you’re already carrying, wouldn’t it?

*Nods to camera*

Voiceover: You would be doing the environment a favour, AND making yourself feel good at the sametime, wouldn’t you?

*Nods to camera*

Voiceover: Well what are you waiting for? Do EVERYONE a favour!

Grinning, you shovel your items into the bag and walk from the supermarket swinging your hips. Damn, this DOES feel good! Why didn’t you think of this before? Why, if everyone did something like this at least once a day…well, there’s a chance, isn’t there? We can make it after all!

You stop dead in your tracks as the last aeroplane flies overhead. As the last car roars by in a cloud of black static. As the last mobile phone spastically squawks into life. As the last christian blames you for the death of the first child. As the last polar bear carcass washes down the centre of Oxford street.

What’s that feeling? Not fear. Not despond. That’s Dread, kid. Heavy as lead. And its eating you alive.

But Dread is POWER. It is imperious. Holy. The ghost of a king haunting a church organ, blastin the same three notes over and over and over and over and over. ‘Til the walls shake and the ghost king takes off his crown and stands imperious atop the tallest tower and yells:

I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO! I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO! I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO! I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO! I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO!

And then comes the greatest of all reckonings and recognitions:

Mankind is going to get the shit kicked out of it: Good.

We’re all going to die. Good.

You’re not special and you’re not clever: Good.

If humankind is a virus, as has been postulated by some of our more sci-fi minded thinkers over the years, then we have reached the end of our lifecycle. We have eaten and destroyed our host body and have turned upon each other. Viral cannibalism. Yum. And yet, many of these thinkers go on to state, does that not simply mean that the human race is about to enter another state of being? A heightened, more liquid state of emotion and play, wherein the basic building blocks of life can be taken apart and rearranged at will? Do we dare to hope? Do we dare to dream?

Of course we fucking do.

But what nourishes us as we wait for this awesome transmogrification? As we sit out the darkness before dawn atop the burning hill? Dread, my friend. In Dread is strength.

The children of Dread are doing their waiting. They will wait ’til the end of days. They’re not sad or despondant. They have sickles for eyes and wear armour made of human tears. They are waiting patiently for the games to end and the business of real life to begin. I believe that children are our future. To be honest, it’s not like I have much of a choice.

Death Comes Along: Children of the Death

The rest is…silence.

LINKS

Blind Willie Johnson
Popol Vuh
Death Comes Along
Grant Morrison
Vernor Vinge
Arthur C. Clarke

FRIDAY 17th of August DIY promoter/ record label Upset the Rhythm take over the DO

CORE CLUB 11-4
£4 REPLY TO THIS POST BRUV
BRING ID (NUS card is enough)

HEALTH play live: trio of Los Angeles noise maniacs who use drums to build a fucked up pyramid of bones inside which fierce wild-eyed monsters, say Liars, Boredoms or Deerhunter would be happy to throw a party, call up the ghosts, paint the walls red, you know the score.

HEALTH- Triceratops

Recently remixed by Crystal Castles, bound for very great things.

Do & UPSET THE RHYTHM DJ play the party tunes that rock the summer, donna.

LOVE & LIZARDS