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| Ashra - @shra Vol 2 |
 Released: 2002 Label: MG.ART Cat. No.: Total Time: 59:27 | |
Reviewed by: Marcelo Silveyra, May 2002 Near the dawning of 1997 and deep in the heart of Japan's metropolitan order and stately unity, a German four-piece would perform a set of pieces so humanly warm and hypnotically spellbinding that their magic would have been impossible to hide from the world. These electronic explorations of subtle change and progression adorned with stunning percussion and passionate guitars have been placed in the open for all interested to relish, and the beautiful trance has thus been dispersed across the entire surface of this planet in gradual increase. The band? Ashra. The magic? @shra Vol.2. A collection of some of the best cuts from two enchanted Japanese concerts and a companion to @shra, this album allows the listener to become a living witness to the intimacy that these musicians convey in mysterious soundwaves, instrumental nightlife refrains, and gorgeous guitar interplay. The result is almost erotic in its warmth, and the visual images that spring magically into the air diaphanously delicious as their soundtrack glimmers with pulsing beads of light. Harald Grosskopf switches smoothly between wondrous percussion and short monumental beats, Steve Baltes grants his kindling gift of atmospherics to each composition, and Manuel Göttsching and Lutz Ulbrich weave their guitars around each other in a sparkling arrangement of shining colors and graceful emotions. Perhaps the music of Ashra would be grotesquely filed among the growing collection of generic and utterly heartless modern electronic music by the indifferent ear, and that would represent a sin of the greatest of proportions. This transcends the youthfully greedy and commercial intent of such work, crosses over to the progressive in its essence, and acquires a poignant resonance that tunes itself to the soul of the spectator and binds him in enveloping strands of sound. The essence of techno, for instance, conforms the very pillars of "Move 9 Up," but Göttsching and Ulbrich lead the piece into a myriad motifs that disappear and then resurge sporadically, leaving the track in a state of progression that is ever-changing before an orgasmic explosion takes place and an electric guitar rips through the air for the record's grand finale. And it is thus that @shra Vol.2 gently slides away from constraints and into a perpetual state of timelessness, allowing each of its five constituting elements to evolve slowly in their instinctive nature and become musical stories unto themselves. Even the slightly ominous nature of "Hausabgabe" and the delicious mirage guitars of "Oasis" are but only a fragment of the gorgeous reach of this record, and they nevertheless seem colossal memory imprints of unforgettable quality. The mere surprise of the manner in which "Sunrain" resolves, resembling the ending grandeur of a baroque organ piece despite its simplicity and deeply shaking the listener from the comfort of expectance, is worth the album alone, and one is left to wonder: were the inhabitants of Tokyo and Osaka presented with magic itself back in 1997? They most certainly were. Rating: 4.5/5 Similar Artists: Ash Ra Tempel, Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream More about @shra Vol 2: Track Listing: Sunrain (9:57) / Four Guitars (17:11) / Hausaufgabe (11:05) / Oasis (7:09) / Move 9 Up (14:02) Musicians: Contact: Website: www.ashra.com Discography
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