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I'm just writing reviews of what's currently on the player...
Manuel Göttsching's got to be the most inconsistent musician I've
listened to.
In the past, he's performed utter garbage like Seven Up (yes Manuel,
large quantities of acid do cause dain bramage),
to relative masterpieces like E2-E4 or Blackouts.
As a whole, his musical style tends to be minimalist synthesizer sequences with some EXTREMELY good guitar.
Walkin' The Desert is a little different. This was done with Lutz Ulbrich
back in 88/89; the third member of Ashra,
Harold Grosskopf, wasn't available for the recording.
The (studio) album was based on the pieces for a live performance that
Ashra performed on June 4th, 1988 at
the Berlin Planetarium to celebrate Berlin's E88 festivities.
The live performance contained a bunch of narrations, accompanied by
music.
I would have hurled if I had to listen to 65 minutes of that sh*t!
Fortunately, the album just contains the music, which is excellent.
Each piece is very simple in that there aren't banks of synthesizers
or 20 minutes of build up before something happens.
The titles of the pieces, to a large extent, describe the simplicity
of the album. "Two Keyboards" is literally just that.
Manuel and Lutz playing a very fast but basic piano/synth piece.
"Six Voices" is a bit more ambient.
It has a slow and spacey start which then transitions into a very catchy
but simple rhythm and lead.
"Four Guitars" has some very interesting and entertaining guitar
work by Manuel.
Based on the title, I assume that there are four styles of guitar involved.
There's also some supporting synthesizer work, though I'm not sure;
you can never tell with Manuel as he can make
his guitar sound like a synthesizer (i.e., Inventions for Electric
Guitar).
"Twelve Samples" contains a lot vocal samples and keyboards.
It's got a middle eastern sound to the vocals, but I won't hold myself
to that description since people on the space list
are being butchered for making any kind of ethnic reference.
Suffice it to say that the vocals are non-English.
The first part of the piece is very upbeat, almost poppy; that latter
part gets more serious.
"Eight tracks", the last piece, wasn't part of the concert.
It was added as a bonus.
It starts out with a very simple keyboard that builds into a powerful
lead.
Then Göttsching hauls out his Gibsen and just wails!
It's sad that the piece is only 4:28 minutes long;
Göttsching could have gone on for an hour without any problems
with this track.
I usually find myself sticking the player on repeat on this piece until
I've had my fix (I'm currently on iteration 7).
All in all, this is a fabulous album, but you can't base Manuel's releases
on it since it's atypical
(at least for the Ashra stuff I have). My copy's on the Thunderbolt
label: CDTB 086.
Mike Livsey mlivsey@netcom.ca