This album was composed by German cult favorite Peter Thomas and contains the score for Erinnerungen an Die Zukunft, a documentary based upon a best-seller by Erich Von Daniken that proposed the theory that mankind's ancestors were aliens who landed on this planet centuries ago. The resulting soundtrack album is not easy for the listener to assimilate, primarily because it consists of two side-long medleys patched together from several unrelated musical cues. The medleys aren't arranged in a smooth, flowing fashion, and the album probably would have made an easier listen if it had been broken down into a better programmed set of individual tracks. Programming quibbles aside, Chariots of the Gods (Erinnernungen an Die Zukunft) is still pretty impressive…
The music rises up from the darkness and howls at the moon. An ancient voice chants in serpentine ecstacy, only to subside and hover next to silence. In those moments when the sound dissolves beyond recognition, the subconscious leaks through, whispering of faded visions painted on stone, of memories suspended by the passage of time, of gods long forgotten. This is the world where Steve Roach, Jorge Reyes and Suso Saiz create their music. There are no scores, no plans, in the initial stages of composition. Like jazz artists who extemporize freely through a shared musical language, the members of Suspended Memories connect on an intuitive level of pure sound. But it isn't jazz they're playing. Roach, Reyes, and Saiz practice a form of collective improvisation from another time, another place, maybe one that never really existed before, except in the shrouded landscapes of a shaman's dream.
American Gods is an American television series developed by Bryan Fuller and Michael Green for Starz, based on the novel of the same name by author Neil Gaiman. The series focuses on Shadow Moon, a man serving three years in prison. With only days remaining in his sentence, Shadow is given an unexpected early release after a personal tragedy. Shadow finds himself next to a man named Wednesday, who offers Shadow a job. Wednesday appears to be nothing but a con artist who needs Shadow as a bodyguard, but is in fact a deity. Wednesday is making his way across America, gathering all the old gods, who have now incorporated themselves into American life, to confront the New Gods, including Media and Technology, who grow stronger. The score to American Gods was composed by Brian Reitzell (Lost in Translation, Hannibal). As eclectic and mercurial as the beloved subject matter of the series, the music is a perfect companion to the visuals on screen yet stands tall in its own right. Original songs written for the series and sung by Mark Lanegan and others also included.