Manuel Göttsching was the guitarist for Ash Ra Tempel, a formative krautrock space jam band based in Berlin that included Klaus Schulze (post-Tangerine Dream/pre-solo) and Hartmut Enke. Göttsching made E2-E4 in 1981, years after Ash Ra’s heyday, as something to listen to on a plane trip. It became, upon its release in 1984, a classic of electronic house/dance and trance music, and is the natural descendant of Göttsching’s Inventions for Electric Guitar (1975). The piece is divided into tracks on CD but plays seemlessly across an hour as an integrated suite. Göttsching holds off on soloing for over 30 minutes, and when he let’s go it’s with the restraint of a jazz player. I’ve listened to this record maybe a dozen times over the last 20 years, so not a lot, but would never relinquish it. I have an idea that music like this (what Julian Cope might term “motorik”), when it’s at its best, can work like noise-cancelling headphones, as if by tapping into the wavelength of your brain’s “always on” subchannel it can then mirror and bring the mind’s noise to zero sum, creating a kind of peace not to be had elsewhere. Perhaps that’s a stretch, but, being in the deep with E2 E4, the background of the morning takes on a different kind of flow and light. Now, perhaps, a game of chess….
Progarchy 