Manuel Goettsching — E2-E4. Story behind the cult ambient album, the predecessor of Techno & House music

Germany after WW2 was a country with a devastated culture—there was no connection with the former country and all types of modern German art were reborn. There were no labels, no agents, no managers, no producers, but there was some creative energy—the pioneer Manuel Goettsching talks about it in almost every interview. Garage bands trying to imitate the great ones were soon replaced by those looking for new senses—many-faced krautrock, at the origin of which our character stood, turned German teenagers’ heads. Goettsching quickly came to compositional minimalism: when a whole well-knit composition was built around one small musical idea or one short chord. He was impressed by the simple technique of American Terry Riley, who put the sounds of an electronic organ into an echo machine on his album Persian Surgery Devishes. Manuel did a similar thing when he released his first solo album Inventions for Electric Guitar in 1975.