Ashra - Blackouts (1977)

Third solo album by Manuel Göttsching, and second that he did under the abbreviated Ash Ra Tempel name "Ashra", before they became a proper band again at the end of the 70s.  Blackouts was a further refinement of the echo guitar plus electronics sound of New Age Of Earth, with Göttsching heading for shorter, melodic tracks other than the 17-minute Lotus suite at the end.  Opening with the catchy '77 Slightly Delayed, the tempo comes down next for Midnight On Mars with its intro's interesting resemblance to Marquee Moon by Television, and so on to make for a very strong and varied album.  The funky Shuttlecocks is definitely my favourite thing here.

link

pw: sgtg

Manuel Göttsching at SGTG:

Inventions For Electric Guitar

Le Berceau De Cristal

E2-E4

Various Artists - A Brief History Of Ambient, Volume 1 (1993 compilation)

First charity shop rummage of the new year turned up this double-CD mix released by Virgin Records, which as the title suggests ran to a short series.  I vaguely remember these coming out, but despite my curiosity they'd have been too heavy an investment for me at the time: this one that I've just paid two quid for still has its Tower Records price sticker of £15.49, and that's pretty reasonable for a double set of 70+ minute discs back then, IIRC!

Everything here is naturally from artists licensed to Virgin, which gives a handy reminder of what canny risk-takers Branson & co were back in the 70s through to mid-80s.  Even into the 90s to an extent - oddly, Hillage/System 7 are conspicuous by their absence for whatever reason (of course, the Point 3 albums hadn't been released yet in '93).  Just take a look at the artist list in the labels below - and I couldn't fit them all in, ran out of space.

Good track choices too (can never say no to a good chunk of Tangerine Dream's Phaedra); full tracklist is here, along with info on an early mispress that led to the mastering cues for Disc 1 being inadvertently used again for Disc 2, the latter ending up with its track divisions all over the shop.  The copy I've just bought is actually one of those - I've re-sequenced Disc 2 now.  So here's a brief history of (Virgin) ambient, with some inevitable classics, and a few (for me) new surprises: loved the remix of early Killing Joke that sounds like an update of the first two Neu! albums, to name just one.

links:
Disc 1
Disc 2
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extra Phaedra...

As a postscript, for anyone who doesn't have Tangerine Dream's 1974 debut for Virgin that catapulted them to stardom with an interstellar, gaseous mix of Moog, Mellotron and flute - grab the full album below.  Was nice to see it featured in the recent Black Mirror episode, along with a faithful recreation of the WH Smith shopfronts that I remember from my childhood.

link
pw: sgtg