Manuel Göttsching

From Ash Ra Tempel to E2-E4

Manuel Göttsching was born in West Berlin on September 9, 1952 and died there on December 4, 2022, aged 70. He began as a classical guitarist, played in school cover bands and, the official bio says, formed the Steeple Chase Blues Band with Hartmut Enke at 15, before studying improvisation with the Swiss composer Thomas Kessler. In 1970 he founded Ash Ra Tempel with Enke and Klaus Schulze, just out of Tangerine Dream; the debut Ash Ra Tempel (1971) was recorded in Hamburg with Conny Plank. Schwingungen (1972), Seven Up (with Timothy Leary) and Join Inn followed, and a 1973 Paris concert was the group's international breakthrough per German Wikipedia. His studio Studio Roma opened in 1974 in Berlin, and its first album was Inventions for Electric Guitar (1975). As Ashra, with Lutz Ulbrich and Harald Grosskopf, he made New Age of Earth (1976), Blackouts (1977), Correlations (1979) and Belle Alliance, then Tropical Heat (recorded 1985 to 1987) and Walkin' the Desert.

E2-E4 was recorded on December 12, 1981 and released in 1984 on Klaus Schulze's Inteam, limited to 1,000 copies. It was issued under his own name, and he reunited with Schulze for Ash Ra Tempel's Friendship in 2000 and a Royal Festival Hall concert on April 2, 2000 at Julian Cope's Cornucopia. He founded his own label MG.ART in 2002 and made Concert for Murnau (2005), and performed E2-E4 live for the first time in 2000 with Zeitkratzer in Berlin, then at Berghain on December 12, 2006 for its 25th anniversary, Lincoln Center in August 2008, the Barbican in London on March 22, 2017 and the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg in 2018. Mixmag credited him as a major innovator of house and techno before the terms existed. His last live appearance, in 2021, was with Hans-Joachim Roedelius at Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin.