Gila - Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee (1973)

To follow on from the Popol Vuh postings of the last two weeks, here's a Vuh-adjacent album.  Conny Veit originally formed Gila as an improvisatory space-rock group, which split in 1972.  After playing on Popol Vuh's Hosianna Mantra, Veit decided to revive the Gila name for another album, and invited Florian Fricke and future Vuh mainstay Daniel Fichelscher (who Veit had met at Amon Düül's commune) to participate.

The album's concept was based on Dee Brown's book Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History of The American West, and on three tracks takes its lyrics directly from the book.  Musically, the blueprint for the forthcoming Popol Vuh sound is unmistakeable, even though Veit writes all the songs and thus everything is based more around 12-string acoustic guitars.  Fricke plays piano and occasional mellotron, Fichelscher handles drums and bass, and Veit's partner Sabine Merbach is the Renate Knaup-esque lead vocalist.  A fascinating little link in the chain of Popol Vuh's history, and a great-sounding krautrock minor classic in its own right.

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