LIVE AT MT. FUJI

Manual Gottsching certainly needs no introduction to Krautrock fans out there, being the premier guitarist of that movement. His friendship with Klaus Schulze helped motivate him to dive into electronics, and this live album is an electronic record. The combination of Mount Fuji and Manual Gottsching just sounded epic to my mind. I'm picturing him on stage with his long hair blowing in the wind as his backing band supports. Not quite. He turned 54 in 2006 and he's mostly sitting at a table with keyboards and wires all over it, with his shorter, coloured hair. Expectations are a funny thing.

Recorded live on April 29, 2006 at the Anoyo Prism Festival on Mount Fuji in Japan, this is a fairly ambient recording. Manual also produced, mixed and composed the light and melodic music here. This is a long one at under 73 minutes and over five tracks. He touches on songs from his solo albums at this time, but also a couple of tracks from his ASHRA days, along with a new composition "Trunky Groove" right in the middle(track 3). This recording did come with a edition that had all of these songs on DVD plus an interview but I don't have that one. The cover art seems to connect with the festival's name. The sub-title to that name was "The collective art conscious festival".

This album is for fans of his electronic period, more than his his early guitar led music which I prefer. ASH RA TEMPEL and THE COSMIC JOKERS really showcase this man's guitar skills. 3 stars is all I got for this one.