It sometimes is disheartening to be a fan of non-commercialised rock music in Australia and hope for some enterprising soul to bring out artists that occupy a niche-corner in our musical pantheon. Fortunately, even in the difficult circumstances that touring this vast continent brings for bands, there are great visionary programmers and enterprising music- and arts festivals that do offer the opportunity for overseas artists to make the long trek overseas and perform live. For instance it took Tangerine Dream 33 years to break their Australian drought and tonight, it is the first opportunity for fellow German musical giant Manuel Göttsching to appear here, courtesy of the far-seeing eye of musical director Sophia Broust.
Supersense is the name of this new Melbourne arts-festival, "exploring the ecstatic, extreme and sublime horizons of human experience, a hypersensory playground for the curious and bold", as it states on their website. Being held on the grounds of the Arts Centre in the middle of town over three days, it provides a platform for a curious gathering of artists who all have a legitimate claim on the main tenet of this festival- there's dance, video-art and a variety of musical experiences; from the Urschrei of Lydia Lunch, the industrial overload of Japanese video-artist Makino Takashi or the sonic adventures of Oren Ambarchi, Marc Ribot and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion to the more intimate but in no means less impressive classical ritual music of Parvathy Baul and South-Korean shamans Noreum Marchi and the complete surrender of the ritual trance-ensemble of Kuda Lumping from Indonesia.
Manuel Göttsching's presence in that company may look a bit odd but in lieu with the theme of this festival is quite logical- through his two performances he will channel two periods in his lengthy musical career; first up he will present solo-material from his late 70s-output released under his own name and the Ashra-moniker, the following day he will reconvene a version of the classic psychedelic rock band Ash Ra Tempel with art-rocker Ariel Pink- both exponents of a time where psychedelic experiences and free-form abandonment were ingredients of a sublime musical horizon.
Friday August 7, State Theatre, 22:45
'Greatest Hits' is the subtitle of this concert which sees Manuel perform solo with a smattering of electronics and his trusty Gibson-guitar. At the core are a cluster of albums he recorded in the mid- to late 70s, where the free-form rock he played as part of the Ash Ra Tempel-collective has been substituted for a more intimate and more electronically based set of albums which confirmed his status as a pioneer in electronic and so-called 'kosmische musik'- a loosely coined term based around groups who through the use of synthesizers and/or guitars, creating oftentimes spectral music and by using sometimes repetitive sequenced loops or musical passages create a space travel-like atmosphere. Inventions For Electric Guitar (1975), New Age Of Earth (1976), Blackouts (1977) and, later, the seminal electronic album E2-E4 (1981) are albums that were showcases for Göttsching's finely developed guitar-play and compositorial prowess, rather than the interactive jam-sessions that the Tempel and groups like Cosmic Jokers yielded before.
During this gig Manuel uses four tracks as his canvas to paint his guitar miniatures on; he starts with Sunrain from New Age Of Earth- normally a sequenced-driven synthesizer track but the pulsating background forms a great backdrop for an elongated solo on both keyboard and guitar where Manuel works in little repetitive schemes, acute chord play and solo-wizardry that perfectly complement the piece. To the same effect he uses Shuttlecock and Deep Distance, both with upgraded rhythm tracks which borderline trance to good effect and takes back a bit of speed in the more eloquent and elegiac Die Mulde, a piece written for an art-installation near the city of Leipzig in 1997 which allows for a more meditative approach.
All up it forms a full hour of powerful music, more than a showcase for guitar or a cosmic trip into wherever but a full-bodied artistic statement, dynamic and thoroughly accessible.
Ash Ra Tempel & guests,
Saturday August 8, State Theatre, 16:45
Ashras to ashras- Manuel starts the Tempel up.
Ariel Pink's haunting vocals
Shags Chamberlain- squonks and crackles
Purple haze- welcome to the Ash Ra Tempel-Experience.
Flowers must die- Manuel shreds the surface
Music for 4 musicians- the opening to Suche
If the first gig was a retrospective into the introspective, then tonight's gig treats you to a visitation of one of rock's most ecstatic and perhaps self-indulgent times- the early 70s, where loads of (German) bands would congregate in houses and studios and under some wholesome influences would jam together. The excellent biography of Christian Wheeldon titled Deep Distance; The Musical Life Of Manuel Göttsching gives some great insights of the variety of people involved in these jams and details an intimate scene where musicianship first and foremost was celebrated, creating a breeding ground of performers who later spread themselves over different genres and areas (Klaus Schulze, Popol Vuh, Tangerine Dream and Agitation Free, to name a select few) and became influential across the world.
Ash Ra Tempel was formed in Berlin in summer 1970 when two schoolfriends, Göttsching and bass-player Hartmut Enke who had performed together in various other incarnations teamed up with drummer Klaus Schulze who had just left seminal rock-outfit Tangerine Dream. Manuel, who was just 18 had been developing his guitar-style proficiently and its primary results are captured on the self-titled debut album and subsequently on classic albums like Schwingungen, Seven Up (starring Timothy Leary), Join Inn and Starring Rosi. These albums all share a love of dynamic interplay between guitar, bass and drums with added keyboards, giving heady nods to psychedelic rock with a variety of influences from jazz and blues (Eric Clapton and Cream are one influential in several ways in both Manuel's guitar work and the jam-sessions they engaged in).
Suche- Manu searches for more lost chords
To recreate that sense of interplay Göttsching has invited co-festival participants Ariel Pink, his bandmate Shags Chamberlain and his fellow Australian noisenik Oren Ambarchi taking the drum-duties to perform, for the first time in 42 years, the whole of the Schwingungen-album, plus two edited tracks from the Seven Up-album, Space and Time. If there were any trepidations beforehand how this collaboration would pull such legendary albums out of oblivion and into the attention of a full hall of anticipating listeners, they soon disappear; Pink is an engaging performer who seamlessly channels the voice of Agitation Free's John L. for the vocals on Light: Look At Your Sun and the almost apocalyptic Darkness: Flowers Must Die, pumping his bass with the same incendiary furiosity of Hartmut Enke four decades ago. Chamberlain adds electronic squonks and cracks at will, and Oren Ambarchi, who normally fiddles with knobs, electronics and guitar sounds to almost earsplitting results, proves to be a good foil for Schulze or Wolfgang Müller. The band-environment gives Göttsching the freedom to concentrate fully on his guitar, not having to stop and checking on the equipment that surrounded him the previous gig; as a proud father he can step back and absorb the environment while also add solos or simple chord-play to great effect. It is a compelling insight in how some of these jam-sessions might have progressed- as it is, it is but a snapshot because of the time restrictions.
The proto-ambient-like opening to the second part of Schwingungen- Suche comes almost as a shock- all four players group around a vibraphone in a setting akin to a Steve Reich-performance, the drifting tones floating over the crowd until, one by one, the players retreat and pick up their own instruments- it is homage to another feature of Ash Ra Tempel-records, where the incandescence of their brand of psych-rock easily gives way to meditative moments only to return to its rock-roots in Liebe.
As Manuel dubbed it himself on the night- the Ash Ra Tempel Experience is thoroughly engrossing and reaches indeed for the ecstatic through layers of noise tempered with individual class and subsequent release. An astonishing performance, considering how little preparation all players must have had and certainly it shouldn't be another 42 years before this music was brought back into the limelight again.
Recommended listening:
Ashra- Live At Mt. Fuji (2007)- with versions of Sunrain, Shuttlecock and Die Mulde an excellent document which approximates Manuel's first performance in Melbourne.
Ash Ra Tempel - Schwingungen The album at the center of Concert 2. Just like its eponymous debut a perfect intro to the 'movements' in which the band worked- the first side an avalanche of sound, harmoniously treated with sizzling guitar riffs and ditto bass, whereas side two brings meditative relief with more astute solos and ambulant moodswings. Seminally robust.
Reading:
Christian Wheeldon- Deep Distance; The Musical Life Of Manuel Göttsching ; an anecdotic biography with good in-depth descriptions of all of Göttsching's recordings and greatly intimate telling of his story.
www.ashra.com
