Popol Vuh

Over the misty Andes descent that opens Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God floats a ghostly choir, conjured on a custom keyboard by Florian Fricke.

Fricke's Munich group, named after a sacred Mayan text, began as electronic pioneers, with Affenstunde among the first German albums built on a Moog. Then he abandoned the synthesiser for piano, guitar, oboe and tamboura, and Hosianna Mantra, with Korean soprano Djong Yun, became hushed, devotional and quietly radiant.

Herzog kept returning to them, for Heart of Glass, Nosferatu and Fitzcarraldo, and Popol Vuh ended with Fricke's death in 2001.