I will make a habit of posting ambient on Sunday, as an astral bridge to mindfulness, a peaceful down time. As I explained in length in my biographical look of my musical journey, ambient is my favorite genre. It is timeless, shapeless, moving. Whether it will help you concentrate on work or on the contrary help escape it, only your experience of a piece will tell.

My first pick is a record I found in 2016 in the depth of YouTube, as I was riding the wave of recommendations after stumbling upon Cluster & Eno - Schöne Hände in a documentary. I had inadvertently opened the pandora’s box of 70’s german producers, making what will sometimes be dubbed as space rock. Among them was the pioneer Klaus Schulze, also known for his Ash Ra Tempel act where he teamed up with the artist of interest today: Manuel Göttsching.

Manuel Göttsching - Inventions for Electric Guitar (1975)

The album Inventions for Electric Guitar was released in 1975, and although released as an album from Ash Ra Tempel, only featured Manuel Göttsching. He explores soundscapes only armed with an electric guitar, and FX pedals. The 45 minutes long LP only features 3 tracks, with the first one Echo Waves being a personal favorite. I remember being blown away by the intricate layering of the many guitar segments, which in a chorus seem to morph into a new instrument of their own, creating sounds one would not have imagined could be made from guitars alone.

As it was my first encounter from ambient music of that era, I was also blown away by the release date. To put things into context, the album was produced in 1974 in Berlin, a year where most popular genres were miles away from these sounds: soul, disco, funk, classic and hard rock. In hindsight, they were a natural part of the psychedelic wave of the early 70’s, which thrived after the arrival of LSD in the 60’s. The best known group which released pieces akin to this in a similar era would be Pink Floyd, with Echoes (1971) for instance. Manuel Göttsching probably combined the sounds of psychedelic rock with the upcoming discreet music of Brian Eno. When listening to Echoes, Inventions for Electric Guitar sounds like a natural continuation of these works, stripping down rock music to its essence, getting rid of vocals, getting rid of rhythmics, purely relying on guitar, echo, reverb, panning and layering.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the sounds this album has to offer, and will hopefully soon come back to the artists listed above. Cheers.