Manuel GOTTSCHING selected discography

Murnau is a name. Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau was a silent movie director whose "Schloss Vogelod" ("The Haunted Catle"), filmed in 1921 and all but forgotten, Manuel Gottsching had been asked to score and peform during its festival screening - with a little ensemble of two violins, a cello and two horns. Composing while the movie was being restored, he found, after both processes reached completion, that the film in its original speed was 20 minutes longer that it had been thought to be, and the music had to be slowed down - with no time to come up with a new score. But such is Gottsching's admirable talent that he re-jigged the piece dividing it into electronics and acoustic parts - without losing its mood and without sacrificing his work. The question could arise as to whether this work would stand without the visuals. And the answer is, it does. Fabulously.

Experiment as a whole, it's not experimental an exercise, as it's classical, starting with orchestral ouverture and flowing into "The Party" synthetic bubbling and deeply emotive keyboard melody which gets adorned with warm brass. Next, in "Auf Zur Jagd", the horns step forward to go minuetting with jolly strings. Mostly, though, the music's deceptively mournful - that goes along well with Murnau, ain't it? - but the pace picks up a bit when it comes to decision of "Double Or Quits" with what sounds like pizzicato covered by fat slab of cello. The album's peak is, undoubtedly, "High Noon" where all the elements unite and weave the solemn Eastern ornament that's charged with so much energy it takes a flute dance to channel it out safely. "Saint And Sinner" feels like a real safe harbor: here's the familiar MG, all anxiously calm. Out from the serenity breaks its continuation, the glorious "Demaskierung", majestic in its orchestral beauty. There's no need to watch at the screen to know what's going on, the music takes on a life of its own. Genuine genius.!

*****

Random is hardly a suitable word for describing Manuel Gottsching's work: no matter how improvised his music is, there's invariably a great dose of mental energy and deep thought lie in the very base of it. Sometimes, still, the maestro performs music that can be considered incidental as it's either done on some special occasion or compiled occasionally. That's what this album is all about, with its two long pieces, one recorded live in 1997 to accompany an installation of 34 mirrors by the Mulde river bank near Leipzig, and the other a collection of patterns laid down in 1981 on the Prophet-10 synthesizer and now adorned with guitar. A conceptual thing, that is.

When you have water and mirrors it's hardly surprising that the music of the title composition is reflective. Windy atmospherical, it builds on slowly on soft percussive shadowplay as elusive as only cloudy skies are over the river. Its first part bears a title of "Schopferische Stille" which means "Creative Silence", but there's no total still in the real world so going through the looking glass in the search of it feels a nice way of practical escapism. At least, with subtle melodies bobbing up and beats running more and more intensive, it feels good.

"HP Little Cry" gets even deeper into the unconscious, the low notes pulling the nerves and moving you before you know it. The guitar leads down the path that has no end until you imagine it between the sound strata and flashes of strumming and delicate picking here and there. It's not that emotive - or it just seems so... Check yourself once the music stops: are you still the same?

***

Had ASH RA TEMPEL been KING CRIMSON they would come up with some fantastic title for the mighty composition this disc contains. But Manuel Gottsching and Klaus Schulze duo called this exquisite piece as poignant as it is. The music sounds quite sparse being certainly no "Larks' Tongues". But little by little it gets intensive. In places it's hard to tell phased guitar from synthesizers, a real '70s effort which nevertheless is extremely modern in its ambience. There are just snippets of the melodies ASHRA are capable of, overall music is experimental and jazz-tinged. Considering the fact it's all recorded live (at the Royal Festival Hall, at Julian Cope's Cornucopea festival) one can only wonder how good Klaus and Manuel feel each other's drift to follow and complement it the best.

One needs not to be a chess expert to see the album's title screams 'Debut!'. Not so much so, after fifteen years on the scene, yet "E2 - E4" signalled a new beginning for Manuel Gottsching who finally shook off the ASH RA tag to strike on his own - as if his mid-'70s featured additional players! Sometimes the game doesn't seem to require two to play, especially when it's the mind game like this. This record lulls a real geometry in its core - every piece here morphs into the next at the minute's end sharp, with no extra second attached, and with no pause in-between, it's one whole track - yet it's as adventurous as any other MG's work.

It's just take some time to tune an ear to the anxious throb of "Ruhige Nervositat" that sets the framework for the album with a repeating guitar note wrapped in electronic coat which brings no warmth on its quasi-cymbal tails. "...Und Mittelspiel" (all the titles thought up by Klaus Muller who, together with Manuel, did the design are in both Deutsch and English, but this one's better when reflecting the chess theme) bears light flashes on its skin, organ runs putting tasty flesh on the synth bones: the life's a game after all, and there's life amidst the chords that finally let the gentle guitar dance freely in "Promise". Every element shown before come together in "Glorious Fight", yet not to battle but to sparkle and shine in miraculous figures. Not squares, of course, even though aligning oneself to this music is as easy as enjoyable.

****

If Kraut-rock came to be thought of as complex, highly experimental music, then this album is very anti-Kraut. Not that there's any simplicity in it, but by the time ASH RA TEMPEL issued their sixth LP, it wasn't 'their' anymore - it was his, Manuel Gottsching's solo album. So much for the simplicity, yet the original idea was simple too: to record using the guitar and guitar only, with no additional instruments. The effects allowed, what's most amazing is that it's actually a live recording, as Gottsching played the guitar throughout, from the off to the final chord, without jointing the piece together later on. That's the gist of the experment. So no matter how tempting it might be to compare "Inventions" to "Tubular Bells", they're almost opposite - there's no pronounced grandiosity here, Manuel's directive seemed to be the covering of tranquility base.

It's not all serene, though - too much is going on under the glossy surface that bubbles with inner life in "Echo Waves" - but the space around the sound is vast and largely peaceful. The tension is palpably growing until wild rock solo is unleashed, still wrapped in lightning-stricken cloud which dissolved in "Quasarsphere", a delicate retreat from the storm. And then "Pluralis", an epic of sorts, builds up expansively like the Universe itself with a subtle, yet alluring, tune attached to its pulse. This pulse is constantly threatening to turn into a thunder and never does so, therefore an atmosphere is pregnant with urgency and has no release even though there is satisfaction. Is there a better way to get a listener hooked?

*****