Echo Waves
song by MANUEL GÖTTSCHING
“In the 70s, music was changing, mutating, evolving. Musicians were adapting to the great revolutions of technology and the new cool instruments invented.”
Synthesizers took the scene replacing guitars in the imagination of emerging artists who were, believe it or not, already tired of conventional styles and genres.
We covered a lot of the Krautrock and Kosmische Musik scene in Berlin, and the rest of Germany, in our previous reviews. We already spoke about Cluster, Harmonia, Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, and many more.
When Manuel Göttsching formed Ash Ra Tempel in 1971, he was joined by another familiar figure of the krautrock scene, Klaus Schulze on keyboards and drums, and by bassist Hartmut Enke. Before that, Schnitzler and Schulze had worked together in Tangerine Dream. They released an album together, but Schulze temporarily left the band because of his desire to pursue a solo career.
“After releasing six albums and contributing to the rise of Krautrock with Ash Ra Tempel, Göttsching remained by himself and composed one of the most influential guitar albums of all time: Inventions for Electric Guitar.”
The album was released in 1975, initially as a new Ash Ra Tempel album.
If you are a Pink Floyd fan, you will be pretty impressed by the "The Wall" delayed guitar sounds of the first track, Echo Wave. You will also be surprised to notice the use of guitar, which probably inspired U2's The Edge, or Police's Andy Summers, or Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood in the following decades.
Inventions for Electric Guitar result from a musician approaching a musical era change, using a relatively old instrument with the same approach that other musicians were having with keyboards, synths, and computers. Research.
The album is recorded only with Göttsching guitar, with the heavy use of effects, delays, reverbs, and loops. Listening to the album, we immerse ourselves in the space vibe of the Kosmische Musik era. It's pretty astonishing to think about how this three-track album contains such a vast number of elements we then would have found in an infinite number of future albums.
“As I always say, nobody invents anything. When our inspiration comes, that is always the result of a mix of knowledge, research, and imagination. It is, however, challenging to know or think about what inspired this album.”
Göttsching had a classical music background, and this probably contributed a lot. The album also has elements of minimalism that remind me of Steve Reich and Philip Glass' compositions.
Manuel Göttsching wrote and performed Inventions for Electric Guitar entirely, and apparently, the album was encoded with the Stereo Quadraphonic, or "SQ" matrix system, for four-channel quadraphonic sound. SQ recordings are compatible with standard two-channel stereo playback systems.
