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CD Feature/ Manuel Göttsching: "E2-E4 25th Anniversary Edition"

  Tobias

1984. “E2-E4” is released for the first time, after having spent three full years in Manuel Göttsching’s vault. The reactions in his native Germany are mostly devastating.An editor of the “Audio” magazine claims that even watching two chess players think is more exciting than this record, another calls it “banal, boring and uninspired”, while influential local weekly “Zitty” passes an even more unmerciful jdugement: “There is no excuse whatsoever for this album”. 25 years later, it will be considered as one of the greatest and most influential pieces of music of the 20th century.

By now, you can be sure that entire diploma theses have been written about “E2-E4” on top of it being called the true point of departure for techno, trance and chill out, avantgarde ensembles performing cover versions, while established and renowned newspapers are penning philosophical analyses in its honour. If one thing has remained the same over all these years it must be that “E2-E4” leaves everybody with an opinion – only difference being that by now everybody has come to love it. Under the umbrella of two ecstatically repeated chords, a rubbery bass line, floating guitar licks, razorsharp percussion loops and tiny shifts in the accompanying sequencer patterns, ravers and intellectuals can share an unlikely space to meet and dance together. There was not a single moments in its existence, when this album was truly in the limelight the way other classics were. From an underdog position, it developed a magnetic pull, whispering instead of screaming and drawing in more and more devotees until it had turned into a phenomenon of mass culture by and in itself. And because it had nothing to do with trends and calculated hipness, listeners could always discover it for themselves, regardless of whether they bought their first copy in 1984 or late 2006, when Göttsching’s own record label issued this wonderful anniversary edition on the exact day the piece was composed. Not a single new note of music is to be heard, this is neither a remix, nor a reworking, nor does the CD feature any bonus tracks. The sole addition consists in an extensive article printed on the inside of the Digipack. And yet, to read Göttsching himself write about his masterpiece’s genesis, his initial scepticism and that annecdote of Richard Branson rocking his baby daughter to sleep before smiling and prophecising that Göttsching could “make a fortune with this record”, is worth its purchase alone.

You discover new details constantly: That the bass drum does not pound with 4 beats to the floor in each bar but only three, and that there is the sound of something like an electric kettle boiling over placed subtely in the back, which is mainly responsible for the enormous tension, endorphines gushing out and the rush of adrenalin which permeates this maddeningly hypnotic hour-long session of “pretty damn good playing around”, for example. But each time you think you’ve heard it all, there are more surprises. That, of course, is part of the ongoing appeal of “E2-E4”: The game is still far from over.

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: Manuel Göttsching / Ashra