Summary.
Ash Ra Tempel, formed by guitarist Manuel Gottsching (and initially featuring
Klaus Schulze on keyboards),
practiced a more eartly form of cosmic psychedelia on
Schwingungen (1972)
and on their masterpiece, Freak'n'Roll, off the album
Join Inn (1973), the ultimate synthesis of hippy culture and
German expressionism, of Grateful Dead and teutonic sensibility.
Manuel Gottsching formed the
Cosmic Jokers (1974) with Schulze and then started a solo career with
the ambitious Inventions For Electric Guitar (1975), which would be
followed by more and more spiritual works for the new-age generation.
Full bio.
(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
Ash Ra Tempel were among the main players of the psychedelic era in Germany, but above all they were the incubators of two of the most influential projects in all of German rock. Klaus Schulze, founding member of Tangerine Dream, and Manuel Göttsching, a young and ambitious guitarist, were playing in an amateur band, the Steeple Chase Blues Band, when the boom of the German scene began. Together with Hartmut Enke on bass, the two founded Ash Ra Tempel in 1970, and by September they had already released their first album, Ash Ra Tempel (Ohr, 1971). Supported by Göttsching’s endless guitar improvisations and Schulze’s painterly sense of sound, the long Traummaschine introduced them as the German Pink Floyd—more “progressive” than “cosmic.” The other side of the album, Amboss, was more balanced in its instrumental excesses.
After losing Schulze, who was working on his first solo album, Göttsching recorded Schwingungen (Ohr, 1972), the group’s masterpiece. Structured as two long, independent suites, Light And Darkness and the title track, it stood as one of the defining works of the cosmic music of the time. More turbulent than the descriptive works of Tangerine Dream, it was favored by those who rejected the latter’s technological pretentiousness in favor of a sound still rooted in rock music.
Schulze returned in time for the third album, Join Inn (Ohr, 1973), which also featured singer and poet Rosi Müller. The two long suites on this record are evenly divided between Schulze’s cosmic style (Jenseits) and Göttsching’s psychedelic one (Freak'n'Roll). The latter perhaps represents the peak of the group’s entire career: updating the intuitions of the Grateful Dead with Teutonic gloom, Ash Ra Tempel achieved, for twenty minutes, an unsettling synthesis of two cultural worlds—the Californian hippie spirit and the German post-expressionist one.
The live orgy with the then-famous LSD guru Timothy Leary, Seven Up (Kosmische Kouriere, 1973), became legendary, but its two suites, Space and Time, are rather childish.
Starring Rosi (Kosmische Musik, 1973), featuring Göttsching with singer Rosi Müller, bassist Dieter Dirks, and drummer Harald Grosskopf, closed the group’s saga. Despite the new rhythm section of Harald Grosskopf and Dieter Sierks, Göttsching’s guitar meanders aimlessly in Laughing Loing, and Rosi’s singing is somewhat cloying. Perhaps Schulze’s imagination was missing, even if Fairy Dance manages to find a sparkling melody for mellotron.
Göttsching would continue on his own, giving rise to one of the most daring sagas in German music.
Discover Cosmic (Ohr, 1977) is an anthology.
At the end of 1973, Ash Ra Tempel disbanded. Göttsching started the Cosmic Jokers with Schulze and percussionist Harald Grosskopf, but it was only a brief interlude that produced two albums: Cosmic Jokers (Ohr, 1974), with one suite per side, Galactic Joke and Cosmic Joy; and Galactic Supermarket (Ohr, 1974), with two more 19-minute suites, Kinder des Alls and Galactic Supermarket, which were simply recordings of acid parties, followed by various record-label speculations.
Göttsching also took part in the occult session Tarot (1973) directed by Walter Wegmüller.
Göttsching returned to the studio for the ambitious Inventions For Electric Guitar (Kosmische Musik, 1975), which launched his solo career. The guitarist focused on what he did best: long spacey fugues and delicate lullabies. Echo Waves and Pluralis draw on the minimalists, but in a naïve, hippie-like way, akin to Edgar Froese’s work with the synthesizer.
New Age Of Earth (Virgin, 1976) took up the same ideas but in a more banal form. Far more daring was Dream And Desire (Navigator, 1991), recorded in 1977 but released only in 1991, with Dream revisiting the intricate mantras of New Age and Desire indulging in the most cosmic trance.
The electronic manipulations of the guitar had by now become his trademark. Some of the tapes he recorded at home between 1973 and 1979 were later released on The Best Of the Private Tapes (Purple Pyramid, 1998).
At the head of Ashra, with Harald Grosskopf and Lutz Ulbrich, Göttsching recorded Blackouts (Virgin, 1977), Correlations (Virgin, 1979), and Belle Alliance (Virgin, 1980), which returned instead to progressive rock—a fusion of Pink Floyd and Stomu Yamashta.
Then, increasingly marginalized by a rock world that was heading in louder and different directions, he devoted himself for a while to film music, composing in particular the soundtracks for *Winter* and Le Berceau de Cristal (Spalax, 1993), recorded in 1975 with guitarist Lutz Ulbrich.
The only true album of those years was, in fact, a pioneering work: E2-E4 (Deutsche Astrophon, 1984), a one-hour piece for guitar and synthesizer recorded live in the studio in 1981—it was techno music for the cyberpunk generation (except that neither techno nor cyberpunks existed yet).
Ashra: Walkin' The Desert (Navigator, 1989) is a revised version of a 1988 concert, structured as a suite in five movements and orchestrated in the manner of avant-gardists: the first movement, for two pianos, is in the vein of Steve Reich; the second is shamelessly new-age electronic music; the third, for four guitars, returns to the ultra-psychedelic atmospheres dear to the young Göttsching; the fourth and fifth are inspired by Holger Czukay’s collages of sampling and electronics.
Tropical Heat (Navigator, 1991) by Ashra, recorded in 1985/86, is even more commercial, focused on seducing the listener through melody and rhythm.
(Original English text by Piero Scaruffi)
Gottsching resurrected the moniker Ash Ra Tempel for
Sauce Hollandaise (Serie Poeme, 1998), credited to Ashra,
contains three lengthy experiments:
the 31-minute Echo Waves, the 21-minute Twelve Samples and the
22-minute Niemand Lacht Rueckwaerts.
Friendship (Manikin, 2000), a collaboration with Klaus Schulze, credited
again to Ash Ra Tempel, contains the 30-minute Reunion,
the 22-minute Pikant and the 26-minute Friendship.
Ashra and Ashra 2 are long, extended live performances.
The Making Of (2002) is a three-CD box-set that collects unreleased
archival material.
Concert for Murnau (2005) was composed in 2003 as the soundtrack for Murnau's silent film "The Haunted Castle".
Die Mulde (2005) documents the soundtrack for an art installation of 1997 and
contains two lengthy pieces, the 40-minute four-movement
Die Mulde and the 32-minute Hp Little Cry.
Gottsching died in 2022.
