Soaring — Popol Vuh’s radiant, guitar-led peak. Einsjäger & Siebenjäger is the fifth album by Popol Vuh, and for many the peak of their acoustic, spiritual period: a flowing, melodic, uplifting record that ranks among their most beautiful.

The short version

The fifth album by Popol Vuh, recorded in Munich and released in 1974 on the Kosmische Musik label; five shorter pieces and a side-long title track, around thirty-six minutes. It deepens the partnership of Florian Fricke on piano and Daniel Fichelscher on guitar and drums, but shifts the balance toward a more melodic, guitar-led, rock-band energy, quite unlike the hushed stillness of Hosianna Mantra. The Korean soprano Djong Yun returns, her pure voice at its most triumphant on the long title track. Graceful, devotional and dazzlingly alive, it is one of the great records of the German kosmische scene.

The guitar takes the lead

By 1974, Popol Vuh had left behind the pioneering Moog electronics of their earliest work and settled into the serene, acoustic, spiritual music that Florian Fricke had turned to on Hosianna Mantra. This fifth album deepens the partnership he had begun with the gifted Daniel Fichelscher on the previous record, Seligpreisung, but it moves the music in a fresh direction. Where the earlier albums had been hushed and meditative, here the balance tips toward Fichelscher, whose soaring electric guitar and propulsive drumming, remarkably, both played by the same man, give the record a radiant, flowing, almost rock-band energy. Fricke’s piano remains at the heart of the music, and Djong Yun returns on vocals, but the overall feel is brighter and more dynamic. The album’s title translates the names of two characters from the Popol Vuh, the Mayan sacred book from which the band took its name.

The sound

Flowing, melodic, uplifting music, more energetic and guitar-led than the still, devotional Hosianna Mantra, yet no less beautiful or spiritual. At its centre are Florian Fricke’s excellent piano and spinet and Daniel Fichelscher’s electric guitar, which soars to ecstatic, ringing heights, driven along by his own vigorous, almost rock-style drumming. The interplay of the two, piano and guitar entwining and lifting one another, gives the album its dazzling sense of life and forward motion, so vivid that it sounds as though the whole thing were captured live. Djong Yun’s pure, radiant vocals appear on occasion to brilliant effect, and Olaf Kübler’s flute adds gentle colour. Through all its energy the music stays contemplative and devotional, graceful and warm, an uplifting rather than a darker kind of progressive rock, and one of unusual purity of feeling.

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The songs

The album is built from five shorter pieces on its first side and a single long track on the second. Side one moves gracefully through the brief Kleiner Krieger, the lovely King Minos, often singled out as a highlight, the flowing Morgengruß and Würfelspiel, both showcasing Daniel Fichelscher’s guitar, and the warm Gutes Land. Then the whole of the second side is given to the nineteen-minute title track, Einsjäger & Siebenjäger, widely regarded as the peak of the album and one of the group’s finest moments: a masterclass in dynamics and mood, building and receding, with Djong Yun’s voice at its most triumphant and jubilant. Best heard whole, the album flows as a single, radiant journey.

Reception and legacy

Einsjäger & Siebenjäger is widely regarded as one of Popol Vuh’s finest and most beautiful albums, and by many as the very peak of their classic acoustic period, standing alongside Hosianna Mantra. Admirers praise Daniel Fichelscher’s soaring guitar, Florian Fricke’s piano, Djong Yun’s radiant vocals and above all the flowing, uplifting energy of the whole, so different from the darker moods of much German rock of the era. The side-long title track is often named as the single piece to play to a newcomer. As the record where the Fricke and Fichelscher partnership reached full, dazzling bloom, it is both a perfect introduction to the band and, for many devotees, their crowning achievement, a work of rare warmth, purity and grace.

The verdict

A radiant, flowing, deeply beautiful album, and one of the essential Popol Vuh records — melodic, uplifting, spiritual music in which Daniel Fichelscher’s soaring guitar and Florian Fricke’s piano lift one another to ecstatic heights. Come to it for its dazzling energy and grace, above all the nineteen-minute title track with Djong Yun’s triumphant voice, and let it play unbroken. A perfect place to begin with the band. From here, Hosianna Mantra for the hushed masterpiece it grew from, and Seligpreisung and Das Hohelied Salomos for more of Fricke’s acoustic, spiritual music. A luminous jewel of kosmische Musik.

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