Brüder des Schattens - Söhne des Lichts

Popol Vuh’s Florian Fricke worked with film director Werner Herzog on the latter’s 1979 film Nosferatu, a moody, meandering retake on F.W. Murnau’s 1922 picture. The resulting soundtrack music was spread across two Popol Vuh albums, though there’s plenty of ancillary material, too. On Brüder Des Schattens - Söhne Des Lichts, Fricke notably pulls back from the ‘raga rock’ he’d been exploring, with guitarist Daniel Fichelscher, over the previous half decade: instead, there’s a peaceable calm to much of the music here, none more so than on the side-long title track, which builds from vocal chants in Gregorian style, to a quietly epiphanic piano-and-guitar motif that drifts gloriously, the purr of Alois Gromer’s sitar offering painterly commentary on the main theme. This track was edited down to a measly six minutes on the recent reissue of Nosferatu — and yes, you do need the full version.