Ashra

Ashra was the second phase of the spacy Krautrock outfit <a href="spotify:artist:5f6eufK2ZswS7hxhEZyIG9">Ash Ra Tempel</a>, where founder (and, sometimes, sole member) <a href="spotify:artist:38KMWWA4MPJ6VxlO9kx6CU">Manuel Göttsching</a> refocused the project's direction and began to concentrate more heavily on electronics. Especially with the revolving-door membership, <a href="spotify:artist:38KMWWA4MPJ6VxlO9kx6CU">Göttsching</a> had always been the focal point of <a href="spotify:artist:5f6eufK2ZswS7hxhEZyIG9">Ash Ra Tempel</a>, making their mind-bending psychedelic jams into showcases for his cosmic guitar work. However, at the outset of the Ashra era, <a href="spotify:artist:38KMWWA4MPJ6VxlO9kx6CU">Göttsching</a> was literally a one-man band, backing his guitar explorations with synths and sequencers that made his music sound cleaner and more pleasantly meditative. <a href="spotify:artist:5f6eufK2ZswS7hxhEZyIG9">Ash Ra Tempel</a>'s status as a going concern was in doubt by the end of 1973, having fallen into a <a href="spotify:artist:38KMWWA4MPJ6VxlO9kx6CU">Göttsching</a>-plus-guest-star pattern; <a href="spotify:artist:38KMWWA4MPJ6VxlO9kx6CU">Göttsching</a> released a solo album under his own name in 1974, Inventions for Electric Guitar, where his interest in electronic music began to crystallize. Less a regrouping than a renaming, Ashra's inaugural release was 1976's New Age of Earth, one of <a href="spotify:artist:38KMWWA4MPJ6VxlO9kx6CU">Göttsching</a>'s finest efforts under any name. The 1977 follow-up, Blackouts, was also entirely solo. For 1979's Correlations, Ashra became a full-fledged band for the first time, with guitarist Lutz Ulbrich and drummer <a href="spotify:artist:1yejR2Tszo9sGMXtmuq07K">Harald Grosskopf</a> officially joining the lineup. However, after 1980's Belle Alliance, the group went on hiatus. <a href="spotify:artist:38KMWWA4MPJ6VxlO9kx6CU">Göttsching</a> recorded the proto-techno masterpiece E2-E4 under his own name, and Ashra didn't appear again until a 1989 reunion for the album Walkin' the Desert. Tropical Heat followed in 1991, and the group continued to record sporadically through the '90s. ~ Steve Huey, Rovi