Manuel Göttsching

 

Manuel Göttsching died a few days ago aged seventy. His death was announced by his family yesterday leading to a flurry of posts on my social media feeds, almost all of them featuring this, E2- E4, an hour long piece of minimalistic electronic music recorded in 1984 that prefigures much of what came half a decade and more later- the synth waves, pulses and two chord motif played on a Prophet 10 synthesiser was recorded a s an exercise by Manuel, an hour of music to play on a journey. Over the simple bedrock he drops in a variety of melodic phrases and adds percussion. In the second half, side two if you're playing it on vinyl, he adds some electric guitar. Played and recorded live, no overdubs. 

E2- E4 works brilliantly, one song stretched out for an hour, built around minimal repetition but always shifting slightly, a marriage of rhythms and harmonies. It's influence is enormous. Larry Levan played it at Paradise Garage in New York. With the addition of tropical birdsong and late 80s house music bounce it became the basis of the global Italo house hit Sueño Latino, a record released and re- released countless times. 

Sueño Latino

E2- E4 found its way to Detroit and was worked and reworked by the key players there. In 1989 Alex Paterson played it as part of his early ambient house sets at Land Of Oz and Heaven. In 1995 Basic Channel turned it inside out for their Remake (Basic Reshape). On and on E2- E4 goes.

Manuel was more than just E2- E4. As the guitarists and leader of Ash Ra Tempel he was a key figure in 70s krautrock, along with Klaus Shulze (who joined after leaving Tangerine Dream), a group who rejected 60s blues rock in favour of something more free and more improvisational. In 1981 he recorded with Richard Wahnfried (a pseudonym for Schulze) on Tonwelle, a two song album with the songs Schwung and Druck, one song per side (since expanded to four songs). Göttsching plays guitar with Schulze on keyboards. A track that can be played at either 33 or 45 rpm, depending on taste and mood. This version, at 33, is a beauty. 

Schwung

R.I.P Manuel Göttsching 

Basic Reshape

The flipside to sunshine drenched Italian Balearica is austere, minimal dub- techno from German duo Basic Channel. In 1995 Basic Channel (Moritz von Oswald and Mark Ernestus) put out a CD called BCD which compiled the series of 12" singles they'd released during the two previous years, a series of pioneering deep cuts. On the album was this- a six minute glide- by of bass, FX, insistent rhythm and heavy sounds- titled Remake (Basic Reshape). 

Remake (Basic Reshape)

Remake (Basic Reshape) originally saw the light of dawn under the name e2e4 Basic Reshape, a remix of Throw by Paperclip People (Carl Craig's brilliant dub- techno guise). Basic Channel remade Craig's track, which sampled Manuel Gottsching's minimalistic, hour long E2- E4 (the basis of yesterday's post, 1989's Sueño Latino). In doing so they pushed pushing Gottsching's 1984 album into new directions. Remake is a heavy duty, slow motion, bass led groove, a long way from the original and the '89 hit that sampled it. The melody has been filtered out and replaced with utterly absorbing layers of sounds. Dance music (for want of a better term) had a real sense of forward trajectory between '89 and '95, a constantly forward thinking form, the music of the future in the here and now. This still sounds futuristic. 

Sueño Latino

Following on in an almost straight line from yesterday's Richard Wanfried post, a very long Klaus Schulze instrumental featuring E2- E4 composer/ guitarist Manuel Göttsching, this is the 1989 ambient/ Italo - house classic Sueño Latino, ten minutes of summer to banish the mid- December blues, bringing some colour and some warmth to our current world of cold, semi- permanent darkness. Sueño Latino were four Italians-  Andrea Gemolotto, Claudio Collino, Davide Rizzatti and Riccardo Persi - who created this ten minute classic, built around Göttsching's E2- E4 and some birdsong, a hit around Europe and released in umpteen formats and countries. Discogs lists it as being released as a single in 1989, 1991, 1995, 1996, 1997 and 2001 and on no less than 243 compilations. None of which takes anything away from it, a song with all the right elements in exactly the right places. 

Sueño Latino

Monday's Long Song

A long song from 1981, that came to my attention via Dr. Rob (Ibiza/ London veteran currently resident in Japan) and his tribute to Jose Padilla and the Balearic sets he played at the Café del Mar. Druck is eighteen minutes long, the work of Klaus Schulze, a pioneer of West German cosmische music and briefly a member of both Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel. Schulze took on the alias Richard Wahnfried and had the good fortune/ good judgement to get Manuel Göttsching in on guitar, the man who recorded the legendary E2- E4. 

Druck

Druck is led by Spanish guitar plucking and Schulze's spaced out synths and some gentle drumming, and then acres of rippling rhythms, blissed out sounds, an extensive guitar solo, more Spanish guitar, some echo- heavy percussion and a gathering intensity. All very organic sounding. Druck comes on a double sided record called Tonwelle, paired with the slightly longer Schwung. At some point after '81 a copy made it's way to Ibiza where Padilla wove it into the sets he played at sunset at the Café del Mar. 

Checkmate

Manuel Gottsching's E2 E4 is one of the building blocks of modern electronic music, a minimalist hour long piece of musical hypnosis and groove from 1984. The title is a chess move and also refers to the tuning of Gottsching's guitar. It influenced the house scene, was played heavily in Chicago in the 80s, was sampled by Sueno Latino and later remixed by Basic Channel. Essentially though, just click play and listen.