Artist

Ash Ra Tempel

German krautrock band

Berlin, Germany • 1970 – 2001

Ash Ra Tempel is a music group from Berlin, Germany, active 1970–2001. Their discography on Gatefold includes 11 records.

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Albums tracked

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1970

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Biography

Ash Ra Tempel was one of the most notable German Krautrock groups of the 1970s, and a notable example of cosmic or space rock. Emerging from the late-60s Berlin underground scene, the group was active until 1976 and re-united briefly from 2000–2001. The group was originally founded by guitarist Manuel Göttsching, keyboardist/drummer Klaus Schulze, and bassist Hartmut Enke in 1971. All three founding members had previously played together as part of the short-lived group Eruption founded by Conrad Schnitzler.

The Arc of Ash Ra Tempel

The pivots — what forced Ash Ra Tempel to reinvent.

The Heavy Psych Trio
In 1971, the band was a power trio operating on pure instinct and volume. Klaus Schulze's propulsive, unstructured drumming locked in with Hartmut Enke's heavy bass, giving Manuel Göttsching a platform to shred his way into the stratosphere. This era lasted exactly one self-titled album before Schulze bailed for a solo career. You hear the raw, unedited intensity of this short-lived lineup on the side-long track Amboss, which is basically twenty minutes of pure, sweaty adrenaline.
The Cosmic Acid Experiments
After Schulze left, Göttsching and Enke recruited drummer Wolfgang Müller and began chasing a looser, more drug-fueled vibe. This culminated in traveling to Switzerland to record with LSD guru Timothy Leary, resulting in the chaotic Seven Up album. The sessions were a mess of Swiss counterculture hangers-on screaming into microphones over bluesy space jams. That wild, untamed energy also fueled Schwingungen, a record that traded the metal machine music of their debut for sprawling, vibraphone-laced spiritual quests.
The Solo Guitar Minimalist
By 1973, Enke had completely retired from music due to severe drug experiences, leaving Göttsching as the sole proprietor of the name. He reacted by ditching the band format entirely for Inventions for Electric Guitar in 1975. Armed with a four-track tape recorder, an Eko Computehythm drum machine, and his Gibson SG, he multi-tracked himself into a corner of hypnotic, interlocking delay loops. This move laid the entire foundation for what became the Berlin School of electronic music and techno.

Influences

The Jimi Hendrix Experience — Manuel Göttsching repeatedly cited Hendrix as the sole reason he picked up the electric guitar in his teens. You hear this influence in the wild, feedback-drenched soloing on the track Amboss. He took the blues-scale freakout and stretched it into infinity.
Pink Floyd — The early Syd Barrett era of Pink Floyd, specifically their live performances in Germany, was a massive blueprint for Ash Ra Tempel's space-rock excursions. The band routinely chased the same interstellar organ wash and echoing guitar slides found on A Saucerful of Secrets. It is the direct DNA for the track Traummaschine.
Terry Riley — Göttsching studied the tape-delay and organ repetition techniques of minimalists like Terry Riley. This fascination became the core driver behind Göttsching's shift to solo looping on Inventions for Electric Guitar. The pulsating, rhythmic layers are a direct electric guitar translation of Riley's A Rainbow in Curved Air.
The Who — Before they went cosmic, Hartmut Enke and Göttsching played in a teenage cover band called Bluebirds, performing high-volume mods covers. The aggressive, physical rhythm section of Ash Ra Tempel's debut album stems directly from trying to match the explosive power of John Entwistle and Keith Moon. It gave their space music a heavy, physical punch.
Pharoah Sanders — The band was heavily into the spiritual, long-form jazz releases on the Impulse! label in the late sixties. The side-long track Schwingungen on their second album mirrors the slow, building intensity and ecstatic, unstructured vocal crying of Sanders' Karma. They wanted to achieve that same transcendental state using rock instruments.