Florian Fricke's name doesn't often come up in discussions of great minimalist composers. The constraints of genre didn’t really suit him, and his best-known work was with German kosmische legends Popol Vuh, most notably in a series of soundtracks scored for Werner Herzog’s films. Kailash provides an introduction to the spare piano music Fricke worked on throughout his career, which was cut cruelly short by a stroke at age 57 in 2001. It’s been assembled by Soul Jazz, in a loving tribute: The first disc contains a mix of released and previously unreleased piano works, while the second contains a score to a documentary Fricke co-directed with his bandmate Frank Fiedler in the mountains of Tibet. This material edges closer to the metaphysical side of his output with Popol Vuh—a smart move that could hook in fans who haven’t ventured into his lesser-known works. A DVD of the documentary, also titled Kailash, rounds out the comprehensive package.
The piano work here covers a considerable timespan, from 1972 to 1989. During these years, Fricke returned to the piano after years spent wandering various disciplines. According to David Stubbs’ krautrock book, Future Days, Fricke studied classical piano as a child, played jazz-fusion later in life, worked as a film critic, and had something resembling a spiritual epiphany when poring over old Mayan texts (one such text was the inspiration for the name P**opol Vuh). Fricke had something of an obsession with purity, both in a sacred and literal sense—the Moog synthesizer that was his trademark for a while was replaced by the piano for, in his words, its more "human" and "direct" feeling.
If those quotes make Fricke sound like some kind of traditionalist, it was never a feeling conveyed in his otherworldly music. The soundtrack disc in this set contains many of the elements that became hallmarks in his work, including banks of foggy drones, reverberating cymbal splashes, and an air of dark rumination that conjures a decidedly inward-gazing spirituality. Fricke's soundtrack work stands on its own, apart from its visual stimulus, mostly because Fricke has a talent for imbuing his music with a strong sense of journey and place, making sure that contrasting ideas gently cascade into one another. There's a traceable arc from the prickly field recordings in "The Garden Morya" and "Nomads Move" to the gentle, wave-like structures of "Last Village" and the subtly creeping "Valley of the Gods". Fricke was clearly keen on reflecting both the light and dark side of his personality—something the Kailash soundtrack fully embodies.
