Tears of god — Popol Vuh score a masterpiece. Aguirre is the album that made Popol Vuh famous far beyond Krautrock, and the beginning of one of cinema’s great partnerships. Released in 1975, it collects music by Florian Fricke’s group associated with Werner Herzog’s 1972 film Aguirre, the Wrath of God, and opens with one of the most celebrated pieces of film music ever recorded.

The short version

The seventh album by Popol Vuh, drawn from recordings made between 1972 and 1974 and released in 1975 on Ohr; six tracks, around forty-four minutes. It gathers music by Florian Fricke’s group connected to Werner Herzog’s film Aguirre, the Wrath of God, and was the first of many soundtracks Popol Vuh made for the director. Only two pieces are actually from the film, including the famous, otherworldly opener, with the rest assembled from other recordings of the era. Haunting, spiritual and beautiful, it stands among their most beloved works and a landmark of film music.

Scoring Herzog

Florian Fricke, the leader of Popol Vuh, was a close friend of the film-maker Werner Herzog, and Aguirre marked the start of a collaboration that would run through many of Herzog’s greatest films. Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God tells the story of a doomed sixteenth-century Spanish expedition searching for the legendary golden city of El Dorado, descending slowly into ruin amid the vastness of the Amazon. Despite its title, the 1975 album is only partly a true soundtrack: just two tracks come directly from the film, while the others were gathered from various recordings made between 1972 and 1974, including reworkings of pieces from earlier Popol Vuh albums. By this time Fricke was moving away from the pure Moog electronics of his debut toward a warmer, more acoustic and spiritual sound, and Aguirre captures both worlds at once.

The sound

Haunting, sublime, spiritual music, poised between electronic and acoustic, sacred and eerie. Its most famous sound is Fricke’s Choir-Organ, a tape-fed keyboard that summons what seems like a vast, ghostly human choir, at once heavenly and unsettling, layered over pulsing Moog and spectral tones. Elsewhere the album turns gentler and more organic, with Daniel Fichelscher’s acoustic and electric guitars, Djong Yun’s wordless vocals, Robert Eliscu’s oboe and pan pipe and Fricke’s piano creating warm, meditative, faintly ethnic textures, alongside one long, drifting electronic soundscape that harks back to the band’s early Moog work. The mood throughout is reverent and otherworldly, awe-inspiring and a little melancholy, music that seems to hang suspended in the air, as much devotional as cinematic.

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The songs

The album opens with its masterpiece, Aguirre I (Lacrime di Rei), the theme that scores the film’s unforgettable opening shot of conquistadors winding down a misty mountain path. Built on Fricke’s Choir-Organ, it is heavenly and haunting in equal measure, and rightly regarded as one of the greatest pieces of film music ever written. Aguirre II is its quieter counterpart, gentle and acoustic, while Morgengruß II and Agnus Dei bring warm, meditative, faintly sacred textures drawn from other sessions. The long Vergegenwärtigung is different again, a sixteen-minute electronic drone recalling the band’s earliest work. Not all of it is from the film, but it hangs together as a single, evocative whole.

Reception and legacy

Aguirre is regarded as one of Popol Vuh’s finest and most important albums, and the music has been widely acclaimed as crucial to the power of Herzog’s film, praised by critics for its haunting, ecclesiastical beauty. The opening Aguirre I in particular has become legendary, endlessly admired and referenced, and central to the reputation of both band and film. Some note that the album is really a patchwork rather than a full score, and that the long electronic piece sits slightly apart, but its overall spell is undeniable. As the first of Popol Vuh’s many collaborations with Werner Herzog, and a high point of their spiritual, cinematic sound, it holds a special place in Krautrock and in the history of film music alike.

The verdict

A haunting, sublime landmark of both Krautrock and film music, and one of the best places to discover Popol Vuh — spiritual, otherworldly music crowned by one of the greatest film themes ever recorded. Come to it above all for the heavenly Aguirre I (Lacrime di Rei), and stay for the gentle, meditative pieces around it, rather than for songs in any usual sense. Play the opening theme, ideally loud, and let it transport you. From here, Affenstunde for their pioneering Moog debut, and their scores for Nosferatu and Fitzcarraldo for more of the Popol Vuh and Herzog partnership. A quietly overwhelming masterpiece.

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