Mg Art Germany

Review: Back in 2015, Ash Ra Tempel co-founder Manuel Gottsching was booked to play a solo live set at Melbourne's Supersense Festival. Instead, he turned up with a trio of musicians - drummer Oren Ambarchi, synth wizard Stags Chamberlain and lo-fo pop hero Ariel Pink on bass and vocals - and performed reinvented versions of tracks from Ash Ra Tempel's first two albums, Schwingungen and Seven Up. This album presents highlights from that performance, of which the third track - a superb, stretched-out medley featuring superb solos from Gotssching and hazy, out-there vocals from Ariel Pink - stands out. Of course, it's all wonderfully evocative in that now familiar Ash Ra Tempel Sound; chiming closer "Schqingungen", a proto-ambient classic re-born, is majestic.

Review: The legendary Manuel Gottsching restarted his seminal Ash Ra Tempel project upon invitation to the Supersense Festival of the Ecstatic on August 8, 2015 at the Arts Centre of Melbourne in Australia. He had quite the supporting cast too: not his original bandmates, but current heroes of experimental rock in the form of Ariel Pink (on vocals and bass) and Melbournians Oren Ambarchi of Editions Mego (gong) and Shags Chamberlain on keyboards and synths. It was Gottsching's wife, Ilona who came up with the idea of performing some Ash Ra Tempel classics and that is when the idea for the 'Experience' was born. He decided to perform pieces from the albums 'Schwingungen' and 'Seven Up' (both from 1972) and contacted the aforementioned artists: who much to his surprise were very familiar with his work and happily agreed to the project.

Review: Over the last couple of years, kosmiche legend Manuel Gottsching has been traveling the World, performing live renditions of his 1984 album, E2E4 - a glistening, synthesizer-and-guitar led chunk of mood-enhancing minimalism that has long been considered a Balearic classic (assisted, some would say, by its' use in Sueno Latino's eponymous 1989 Italian house hit). E2E4 Live In Japan offers an audio recording of one of these performances, with Gottsching re-creating the majesty of his original album with the use of synthesizers, guitars and - presumably - a computer running Ableton Live. It's impeccable, of course, and comes backed with a DVD containing a film of the very same performance.