Letzte Tage - Letzte Nächte

Popol Vuh

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 19, 2005)
• Original Release Date: July 26, 2005
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Spv U.S.
• ASIN: B0009A6N7K
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #219,801 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Originally released in 1976. Features Florian Fricke: piano; Daniel Fichelscher: guitars, percussion; Djong Yun: vocal; Renate Knaup: vocal; Al Gromer: sitar and Ted DeJong: tamboura.

Popol Vuh was founded by mastermind Florian Fricke in Munich in 1970 and are known as pioneers of electronic music as well as the predecessors of the 90's ambient and trance genre. Florian Fricke was one of the first German musicians who worked with a MOOG III, an instrument which created a very new and special sound which was profiled on Affenstunde. This album quickly became a milestone and practically created a whole new genre. The name and the book Popol Vuh stems from Incan mythology and is the memory of the evolution of humanity. Florian Fricke doesn't like to catagorize his music; "Music is a form of law for me." He died on December 29, 2001 in Munich. Kraut Rock at the highest level made by, and for music fans !

All Popol Vuh re-releases are manufactured as high quality collector's series with stickers indicating the bonus tracks. The Digipak spines have a design and when all are put together they form one big picture.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing......not re-mastered, June 20, 2006

By	greyhoundude (Corvallis, OR) - See all my reviews

I purchased this item with the expectation of a re-mastered recording. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Of all the Popol Vuh albums, this is, by far, the most poorly-recorded and could have used re-mastering.

Having said that, this remains my favorite Popol Vuh release. The guitars ring, the songs all find a nice groove and the tunes are good-to-great.

Additionally, the bonus tracks are wonderful! But here's the thing: the bonus tracks, presumably recorded at around the same time, all SOUND better than the original eight tunes on the disc. They are also mastered at a higher volume, so be careful if you have your sound system cranked up.

This was my first purchase of the reissued Popol Vuh CD's. Now I'm not sure about picking up the rest of 'em. If they don't sound any better than the discs I already own, there's simply no point in doing so.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars SPV re-issue versus Japanese "remaster" ...., March 27, 2008

By	Alexander Mills - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Just a brief review to clear up some issues raised by Greyhoundude.

Firstly, the SPV "remaster" of Letzte Tage, Letzte Nachte does indeed sound pretty awful. Curious to find out whether this was a lazy, transfer-based blunder or just a poor recording in the first place, I managed to track down a friend who has a mint, original pressing on LP.

The good (or bad, depending on how you want to look at it) news is that the audio quality of this SPV re-issue is no fault of the mastering process. The original LP sounds just as dull, muffled, and flat as the re-issue listed here. I also tracked down the latest Japanese mini-LP release of this album, and although the audio quality is marginally better (for the sake of approximation, let's say 5%), I would put this down to a slightly higher quality of mastering (common amongst Japanese re-issues), as opposed to any sort of authentic RE-mastering process. As is often the case with Japanese re-issues, sellers (including Amazon) will frequently list them as being fresh, new, Japan-only, high quality remasters, when in reality they are often just ports of previously available Western remasters, repackaged in miniature LP sleeves. As such, be sure to do your research before forking out $50 for such items.

The previous reviewer also pointed out the jump in sound quality between the original album and the bonus tracks. Although I sympathise with his point, I think his gripes lie more with Florian Fricke's recording techniques than any lack of 'remastering' on the part of SPV. All the other re-issues in the series sound truly amazing, and the more I hear Letzte Tag in various other formats, the more I realize that this re-issue is, sadly, probably as good as the album's ever going to sound.