4. Popol VuhTantric Songs / Hosianna Mantra
This is a good transition from Lama Tashi, because in the opening of the Tantric Songs you hear the throat singing, and it is also a very heavily Tibetan Buddhist inspired album. Popol Vuh were an extremely progressive group, their music was ritual. If I could go back in time and participate in any band ever, it would be Popol Vuh. They just brought so much into my life.
Tantric Songs is really about travelling through passageways, travelling through corridors, you put it on and you can be alone, or you can have other people around for a dinner or a party, and it is going to bring up an atmosphere to the room that it is going to make you happy inside yourself. You are going to actually feel this deep inner joy, or at least I do. I cannot say enough about how much of an inspiration Popol Vuh are, and I will go out on a limb here and say that if you listen to the very first background vocals and slowly penetrating musical arrangements and keyboards ideas. If you really analyse and compare this with what I brought to New York when I moved up there and became part of Swans, you will see the influence. They informed the way that I heard folk combined with rock, spirituality and the unbelievable use of melody.
