Manuel Göttsching
Inventions For Electric Guitar

Another fundamental milestone for electronic music is certainly "Inventions For Electric Guitar" by Manuel Gottsching, guitarist of the historic group Ash Ra Tempel. The band, at the beginning of the 70s, delivers masterpieces such as the self-titled album and the track "Suche & Liebe" on the album "Schwingungen", focusing the sound on a cosmic lysergic visionary rock.

The style, although Manuel played the guitar, and not forgetting the presence of Klaus Schulze on drums in the debut, undoubtedly inaugurates the electronic phase thanks to the extended sounds of the patterns from the six strings. The fantastic experience of Ash Ra Tempel, an undisputed trio that joins other German glories (Agitation Free, Xhol Caravan, Neu, Embryo, Kraan, Faust, Can...), concludes in 1973.

Gottsching is one of the most brilliant minds in the scene, who distances himself from replicating the already predictable patterns of the early Seventies English blues rock of the late Sixties, seeking and creating a completely innovative concept. The King Crimson of "Discipline" (1981), solo Eno, and the Talking Heads of the "Fear Of Music - Remain In Light" period propose absurd schemes, never heard before, with intricate rhythms, sonic labyrinths, and Afro influences.

In 1974, however, dear Manuel launches the useful recipe for all the crazy artists who from that period onwards will try to conceive a new guise for Music (with a capital M). Yes, because it is not about intro, verse, and chorus; here inaugurates the marriage between sound and image, vision, film.

The solo debut, besides being enlightening, presents the perfect picture to get to know the Gottsching universe at its best, if one had never listened to it before. Already from the first Ash Ra Tempel record, one comes into contact with his versatility: there's the hellish jam of "Amboss", characterized by blues scales and acid lashings, and the levitation of "Traummaschine", a true flow of expanded minimal consciousness.

Gradually the concept of mechanics, computerization, and robotization is inevitably increased, making music like an infallible program, up to some later electronic stuff (see Autechre) that will transform it almost into a hacker or software.

"Inventions..." is immediately inaugurated by "Echo Waves", the masterpiece of the album, where one can savor all the essence that Gottsching had matured up to that moment. Loop sequences, obsessive mantras, hypnotic gamelan, and one of the first true examples of trance. The setting is what we already learned to appreciate with Schulze's works: a minimal start with the difficulty of discerning the notes, then creating a crescendo and a form that results in some small variations. An exemplary manifesto of Manuel's flair.

"Quasarsphere", instead, leaves aside the pressing rhythm and shows an example of soft notes in a supernatural, divine, enchanted ambient. "Pluralis", the final twenty-minute track, proposes a less varied scheme than "Echo Waves" and is more centered on trance. Repetitive rhythms that are slowly varied in a formidable experimental exercise. The effects that can be recognized are certainly the delay and the tremolo, fused in a sonic magma to form a colossal imaginary wall of notes.

An unmissable journey and recommendable even to those who do not delve too much into instrumental jams and the filmic dimension of music. An album from 1975 and still a hundred years ahead, unfortunately or fortunately.