Ashra – "New Age Of Earth" (Virgin – V 2080) 1977

 Now that everybody has posted "E2-E4 as a tribute to the recently dead Krautrock guitar hero Manuel Gottsching,and claimed it as the year zero of Trance....whatever the fuck Trance is? Sounds like House music to me; the genres of which I have no clue or indeed interest. The chess referenced record in question,apart from being rather boring,is just standard Berlin-School type kosmiche with the swirly bits taken out,to a hypnotic drum box beat......is it the drum box that they think started the madness that remains virtually unchanged for the preceding thirty years.This was what happened to nature after the pre-cambrian period,fast evolution then stasis.The dinosaurs remained unchanged for 10's of millions of years,just like House music variants; Gottschings ambient musings are the pre-cambrian oceans of electronics,but "E2-E4" is the dinosaur.

Most of Gottching's pre-cambrian guitar virtuosity is already available elsewhere on this blog,so as my tribute I have selected this shimmering ambient rock flotation tank muzak outing by Manuel as Ashra, dropping the Tempel part,and also dropping the band. Which is fitting as now all the original line-up of Ash Ra Tempel have now departed consciousness.

The cover looks unerringly like one of the world trade centers relocated to the outskirts of Auschwitz,beaming its truth like an enormous obelisk created by the alien god figure who began this experiment billions of years ago to discover the answer to the ultimate question. This rather disappointed 'God' has just begun to realise that it was all just a complete waste of telly-time. It was all predicted in the BBC comedy series "Hitchikers Guide To The Galaxy".......of course it's 42, innit....its the best answer I've ever heard.......and this LP is just north of 42 minutes long! If that ain't proof i dunno what is...

Anyway Manuel knows the answer, or lack of one, by now,if consciousness exists post-mortem for long enough to know this....probably something really boring like eternal nothing ,ness,more nothing than the nothing we think nothing is right now...ness. And the only way this big Nothing gets to actually BE Nothing, is if creatures like Homo-erectus part four have evolved to actually see and measure the nothing-ness before they blow themselves up;

Nothingness does indeed need defining boundaries before it can be defined....but, does that make it a something?

In fact even referring to nothing as nothing makes it a something.Even thinking about it proves it exists,as quantum reactions only happen when no-one's looking.

So is the only answer mankind can ever offer be 'God',the nothing that pretends its something,but only in the minds of men....homo-erectus.

Tracklist:

1.Sunrain 7:26

2.Ocean Of Tenderness 12:36

3.Deep Distance 5:46

4.Nightdust 21:52

DOWNLOAD this new age of death HERE!