NEW AGE OF EARTH

Whenever I see this first Ashra album (or final Ash Ra Temple album, if you prefer) listed in New Age discographies, I get a bit irritated. Perhaps because I've been following Manual Göttsching's musical career since the mid-70s, I saw him as progressive/electronic or even Krautrock psychedelia. The New Age label?so eighties, I sniffed?seemed somehow demeaning in its implication of featureless massage muzak. Then, years later, I realised there was a defensible reason for this appropriation of Ashra's delicate electronica: the title of the record. And also, the music. It's drifty and more gently rhythmic than most of Göttsching's work; kind of new age-ey in fact. Ah well.