Musician and composer Manuel Göttsching – born September 9, 1952, in West Berlin, Germany – was best known as the founder and guitarist for iconic krautrock group Ash Ra Tempel. He originally took classical guitar lessons as a child but became interested in rock music as a teenager in the 1960s and turned to the electric guitar. Influenced by music from the US, he began to play in bands while in high school and experimented with free jazz and electronic music. Always interested in pushing the boundaries, he began to manipulate sounds from his instruments and created his own distinct sound. In 1970, he formed Ash Ra Tempel with drummer Klaus Schulze and bassist Hartmut Enke. The group’s experimental sound became associated with what was later classified as krautrock. Ash Ra Tempel released several albums – Ash Ra Tempel (1971), Schwingungen (1972), Seven Up with Timothy Leary (1973), Join Inn (1973), Starring Rosi (1973), and the soundtrack to Le Berceau de Cristal (1975) – before Manuel Göttsching issued his first solo album Inventions for Electric Guitar (1975). After the departure of the other original members, he renamed the group Ashra and released four albums with them before returning to his solo career in 1984 with E2-E4. The album became an influence on a new generation of electronic musicians and helped to inspire the house, ambient, and techno music movements of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Sueño Latino’s self-titled single from 1989 sampled music from E2-E4 and became an international dancefloor hit. Manuel Göttsching followed that album with several more - Dream & Desire, Die Mulde, Concert for Murnau, and Live at Mt. Fuji – and issued two more Ash Ra albums and then reteamed with Klaus Schulze for one final Ash Ra Tempel album, Friendship, in 2000. In the meantime, he also released early archive material on 1996’s The Private Tapes, Vol. 1-6. Manuel Göttsching died on December 4, 2022, at the age of 70.
