Manuel Göttsching - E2-E4 (1984, 2006 Re-issue)

Tracklisting:

01 Ruhige Nervosität (13:00)
02 Gemäßigter Aufbruch (10:00)
03 ...und Mittelspiel (7:00)
04 Ansatz (6:00)
05 Damen-Eleganza (5:00)
06 Ehrenvoller Kampf (3:00)
07 Hoheit weicht (nicht ohne Schwung...) (9:00)
08 ...und Souveränität (3:00)
09 Remis (3:00)

E2-E4, one of the few records Göttsching released under his own name, has earned its place as one of the most important, influential electronic records ever released. It's also the earliest album to set the tone for electronic dance music; simply put, it just sounds like the mainstream house produced during the next two decades. Similar to previous Ashra albums like New Age of Earth and Blackouts, it does so with a short list of instruments -- just the nominal drum machine and a pulsing guitar line in the background plus some light synthesizer work. What sets it apart from music that came before is a steadfast refusal to follow the popular notions of development in melody and harmony. Instead, E2-E4 continues working through similar territory for close to an hour with an application to trance-state electronics missing from most of the music that preceded it. Though the various components repeat themselves incessantly, it's how they interact and build that determines the sound -- and that's the essence of most electronic dance music, that complex interplay between several repetitive elements.



An epochal classic, printed here quite beautifully in a digital format in a definitive edition. In essence most readers of these pages will know the story, but to indulge you with a recap, Gottsching emerged from the midst of electronic krautrock heroes Ashra tempel and in 1981, off the back of a Klaus Schulze tour, sat down one evening and dropped a continuous piece of music which was eerily to predicate the arc of dance music for a quarter of a century. Early adopters in the Chicago and Detroit warehouses and mediterranean pleasure palaces must have thrilled to the balanced and continuous surging flow of the hour long piece - even over two sides the mix is perfect for building a club atmosphere and suggesting avenues for mixing, whilst using merely two chords throughout. the minimalism offsets the percussive splendour perfectly - several years later the tune was rediscovered and co-opted into the huge italo house smash Sueno Latino, which cemented its foundation in the burgeoning balearic scene of the time and proceeded through several spells of rapturous revival throughout the nineties, not least when figures like Carl Craig and basic Channel issued their own radically different reshapes and remakes of the piece. Very satisfying then to have this Gottsching sanctioned edition, where the game might truly be said to have begun in earnest.






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