my new holy grail of kosmische music right here. this is by the group Ashra, which is actually a shortened name of Ash Ra Tempel, which is actually just a Manuel Gottsching solo record. this LP came after all the brilliant earlier Ash Ra Tempel albums and was the beginning of Gottsching's ambient/drone/proto-techno phase. many might know Gottsching more readily for one of his other post Ash Ra albums: "E2-E4" from 1984 which provided building blocks for a lot of house and techno music. "New Age of Earth" was the first of his solo jaunts after Ash Ra Tempel.
"Sunrain" kicks off the album with layers of synths, delayed guitar tracks and drum machine that wouldn't be out of place as a soundtrack to a nature documentary. the key here to is that it's quite obvious that the drone and stasis is built around songwriting. yes, songwriting. there are chord changes, melodies etc, yet the track never changes tempo, never changes volume, and never changes the built in rhythms. it has a Steve Reich feel, a very filmic quality to it. totally brilliant. the rest of the album is a little closer to the "windham hill" type of new age that was popular around the time. but there is something about Gottsching's tones and pacing that avoids the "windham hill" cliches. this LP is also unique in that it features Gottsching focusing much more on sythnesizers rather than his later solo work which primarily focused on guitar loops. it's a perfect balance of all of the great things that Gottsching did over the years.
in all honesty i really rediscovered this album last week after reading an interview with Sam Goldberg (Radio People, Mist, etc) who mentioned this album in his top 3 of kosmische. i had found this album probably a year ago and liked it but never gave it my full attention until last week. and it has been blowing my mind since.
listen to it here.
No comments:
Post a Comment