Manuel GOTTSCHING - E2 E4 2016: 35th Anniversary Edition

In anticipation of the 35th anniversary next year one of electronic music’s most influential recordings, the legendary E2-E4 gets an official rerelease by Manuel Göttsching on his own Label MG.ART…Carefully overseen by the man himself.

An epochal classic, most readers of these pages will know the story, but to indulge you with a recap, Gottsching emerged from the midst of electronic krautrock heroes Ashra tempel and in 1981, off the back of a Klaus Schulze tour, sat down one evening and dropped a continuous piece of music which was eerily to predicate the arc of dance music for a quarter of a century.

Early adopters in the Chicago and Detroit warehouses and mediterranean pleasure palaces must have thrilled to the balanced and continuous surging flow of the hour long piece – even over two sides the mix is perfect for building a club atmosphere and suggesting avenues for mixing, whilst using merely two chords throughout. the minimalism offsets the percussive splendour perfectly – several years later the tune was rediscovered and co-opted into the huge italo house smash Sueno Latino, which cemented its foundation in the burgeoning balearic scene of the time and proceeded through several spells of rapturous revival throughout the nineties, not least when figures like Carl Craig and Basic Channel issued their own radically different reshapes and remakes of the piece.

Very satisfying then to have this Gottsching sanctioned edition, where the game might truly be said to have begun in earnest. As they say on the august walls of the Hardwax emporium – buy or die.