Sunday 22 August 2010

A thank you

This weekend I've had the pleasure of a visit from my friend Stephen Iliffe. Stephen, who lives in London wrote the wonderful Painting with Sound - The Life and Music of Hans-Joachim Roedelius, not to mention a whole host of sleeve notes for a variety of CD and vinyl reissues. I made contact with him five years ago to let him know that I had enjoyed his book and we've kept in touch every since. Here we are on the walkway to the lighthouse at Tynemouth.

This seems to be the perfect time to pass on a big thank you to Stephen for his constant encouragement with my project over the last two and a half years.

More about the progress of the book very soon.

Tuesday 10 August 2010

Joaquin Joe Claussell meets writer

A massive thank you goes out to DJ/producer/musician Joaquin Joe Claussell for taking his precious time to provide me with some fascinating answers to my questions via an e-mail interview. What a nice guy!

Joaquin, who remixed two of Manuel's tracks for the Joaquin Joe Claussell meets Manuel Gottsching album, released in 2006 clearly has enormous respect for Mr. Ashra. During his recent Paris concert Manuel claimed that his own reworking of Deep Distance was inspired by Claussell's remix. I mentioned this to Joaquin and his response was that he felt 'tears of joy, tears of gratitude!' No wonder. It turns out that his love of Manuel's music stretches back a long, long way.
In response to my questions Joaquin discussed Gottsching's one hour proto-techno masterpiece E2-E4 and the massive, unlikely impact it had when played by the legendary Larry Levan and other DJs in New York clubs. It was great to hear about this from somebody who was actually there at the time.

Something that Claussell also picked up on is the fact that Manuel Gottsching was making futuristic music some time before this classic 1981 recording. All this and more will be expanded upon in the book. Coincidentally I'll be working on the section about Claussell and Gottsching's collaborative release next week.

Sunday 8 August 2010

Museum Piece I

The Swatch Oracolo Tarot watch, designed by Walter Wegmuller. Wegmuller fronted the brilliant Tarot album, recorded in 1973.

For this double concept work a track was recorded for each of the cards in the Major Arcana of the tarot deck. Wegmuller painted cards to accompany the original vinyl release and the band for this album were dubbed the Cosmic Couriers, featuring fantastic guitar work from none other than Manuel Gottsching.