专辑简介

by Thom JurekGuitarist, Krautrock and electronic music visionary, Ash Ra Tempel founder, and inadvertent techno and trance music pioneer Manuel Göttsching (whose "E2E4" is still blowing minds, being sampled, and can be heard some two and a half decades later in clubs and all-night parties in its 54-minute entirety) has been recording steadily and performing rarely since 1970. Though his later recordings aren't well-known or widely distributed, they don't need to be, and he could care less. This document, recorded at the foot of Mt. Fuji in Japan, is Göttsching doing what he does best: performing solo guitar with his bank of electronics -- keyboards, samplers, digital delays, effects pedals, and guitars. If Neu! developed the "motorik" rhythm, where a single pulsing rhythm would be heard for an entire track and lead to all sorts of unexpected and heavyweight improvising and dynamics, Göttsching was the one who refined it into an art form. The later early recordings of Ash Ra, like Blackouts, were classics of guitar virtuosity and acid-damaged hypnosis, whereas later offerings concentrated on almost new age sounds. True, he's never done anything as remotely heavy as Neu!'s "Hallogallo," but he's never needed to. His more refined sensibility is articulate and somewhat more subtle, and incorporates everything from disco and funk riffs to jazz licks and rock power (when he decides to let it erupt). The five cuts involved in his performance are all of a piece, though they are very different in arrangement, approach, and texture. In the course of 72 minutes, Göttsching goes the distance from the pulse-oriented "Sunrain" -- walking a line between sequencer-lite Tangerine Dream and early Kraftwerk, in which minimal keyboards are layered on top of one another, creating a blessed-out kind of analog techno -- to primitive rhythm tracks with big chords played languidly with fretless bass and electric guitar over the top, as on the lithe "Saint & Sinner." Judging by Göttsching's bluesy guitar chops, David Gilmour has been displaced as the trademark king of minimal tripped-out blues solos -- and with the same tone, too! ... Read More...